We Were Here is an asymmetric co-op puzzle game, if you don't know what those are, it's the idea that two (or more) players experience different gameplay and environments, but usually one player has information relevant to the other to progress on their end; the main punch of these games is the heavy emphasis on verbal communication more than anything. The most popular example of this is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, where one (or more) player(s) conveys a manual about defusing bombs to the bomb technician.
"Lost in a frozen wasteland and split up from your partner inside an abandoned castle, the only possession you have left is a walkie-talkie with a familiar voice on the other end. Can the two of you find your way out in time?" Let's talk about the walkie-talkie for a moment; if you're unfamiliar, a walkie-talkie typically only allows one-directional communication, the ends must take turns relaying to each other. For most of this game's run this was fine, but there's a puzzle later that's a nightmare to do since it's on a timer and you need to relay 7 different steps to your partner, and doing so over just the walkie-talkie and waiting for confirmation is annoying since the person relaying cannot pause the (minor spoiler but not really) reel to show each step, making it play back in real-time and having to replay the reel over and over again, or otherwise pray your partner has literally perfect hearing. It's definitely the weakest puzzle in the game that teeters over the edge into just plain bad imo.
The last puzzle is a little bit of a headscratcher until you realize the doors here are unlocked, which is unusual since every door prior has been locked; after that the steps to proceed are fairly straight forward. There's also a puzzle immediately preceeding this where one has to read back text, but the font used, lighting and size made this incredibly difficult for me to make out even on a 4k display.
The game ends kind of abruptly and on a whimper, we felt like there was another puzzle or two and that it'd been building up to something, and then the game just kind of ends.
Overall though, it's free, and I still mostly had fun playing with Nowhere, so I can't totally bash it in; I'm curious to see if they ever remedied these complaints but judging by steam review average I'm guessing no. I still highly recommend these sorts of games for anyone wanting a more truly co-op experience particularly for two people.
"Lost in a frozen wasteland and split up from your partner inside an abandoned castle, the only possession you have left is a walkie-talkie with a familiar voice on the other end. Can the two of you find your way out in time?" Let's talk about the walkie-talkie for a moment; if you're unfamiliar, a walkie-talkie typically only allows one-directional communication, the ends must take turns relaying to each other. For most of this game's run this was fine, but there's a puzzle later that's a nightmare to do since it's on a timer and you need to relay 7 different steps to your partner, and doing so over just the walkie-talkie and waiting for confirmation is annoying since the person relaying cannot pause the (minor spoiler but not really) reel to show each step, making it play back in real-time and having to replay the reel over and over again, or otherwise pray your partner has literally perfect hearing. It's definitely the weakest puzzle in the game that teeters over the edge into just plain bad imo.
The last puzzle is a little bit of a headscratcher until you realize the doors here are unlocked, which is unusual since every door prior has been locked; after that the steps to proceed are fairly straight forward. There's also a puzzle immediately preceeding this where one has to read back text, but the font used, lighting and size made this incredibly difficult for me to make out even on a 4k display.
The game ends kind of abruptly and on a whimper, we felt like there was another puzzle or two and that it'd been building up to something, and then the game just kind of ends.
Overall though, it's free, and I still mostly had fun playing with Nowhere, so I can't totally bash it in; I'm curious to see if they ever remedied these complaints but judging by steam review average I'm guessing no. I still highly recommend these sorts of games for anyone wanting a more truly co-op experience particularly for two people.