We Were Here

I have a soft spot for games that know exactly what they are and commit to that vision without apology. We Were Here, born out of a student project at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, is one of the most quietly confident small games I have come across. It does one thing: it separates two players inside the ominous Castle Rock, hands each of them a walkie-talkie, and asks them to talk their way to freedom. That premise sounds simple until you realize the entire architecture of the puzzles is built on deliberate information asymmetry. One player takes on the Librarian role, sitting in a reference-rich room packed with clues, charts, and arcane symbols. The other becomes the Explorer, moving through a sequence of chambers where actions must be taken but context is absent. Neither player can see the other's screen. The only bridge between you is your voice, and crucially, the in-game walkie-talkie enforces push-to-talk, meaning only one of you can speak at a time. This single design choice transforms ordinary puzzle-solving into something closer to communication under pressure. You are not just figuring out a puzzle; you are figuring out how to describe a medieval glyph to someone who cannot see it. The puzzles themselves sit at easy-to-moderate difficulty, but the real challenge is articulating what you see quickly and accurately enough for your partner to act on it. Some chambers add a ticking timer, which nudges the tension from calm cooperation into something with a faint heartbeat of panic, and the atmospheric soundtrack shifts with that tension in a way that feels intentional rather than incidental. The setting deserves credit too. Castle Rock carries a dark, almost occult atmosphere, stained-glass windows catching imaginary light and candles burning in stone hallways. For a student project, the environmental craft is striking. There are light horror elements, creepy imagery, and moments where the stakes feel real even though the stakes are entirely fictional. The final puzzle, which involves dressing a theatre stage while a marionette figure creeps toward you, is the moment the game stops feeling like a tech demo and starts feeling like a game with a soul. It is a small payoff, but it lands. The caveats are real and should not be glossed over. The runtime is roughly two to three hours, which will feel short to some and just right to others. The narrative is minimal to the point of near-absence; lore exists in the background, but the story will not stay with you. More practically, the in-game voice system has documented technical problems. Some players cannot hear each other through the built-in room creation at all, and mid-session audio dropouts are not rare. The community workaround is to connect via Steam friends directly, or simply to run a Discord call in parallel. For a game whose entire premise rests on communication, needing an external fix for the communication layer is a real friction point, especially for newcomers who do not yet know the workaround exists. Still, I keep coming back to what We Were Here actually is: a free pilot episode that introduced a generation of co-op players to asymmetric puzzle design. It earned a Best Indie Game award the year it launched, and it remains a graceful on-ramp to the rest of the series. If you have a friend who has never tried a virtual escape room, this is the lowest-stakes possible introduction. Two hours, no cost, one good conversation, and a castle that genuinely tries to unsettle you. For the right pair of players, that is more than enough.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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