We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip

I have a soft spot for co-op games that trust two people to just talk to each other, and The FriendShip earns that trust quickly. Total Mayhem Games stripped away the gothic castle lore of the main We Were Here series and replaced it with something lighter: an abandoned pirate-themed amusement park where a theatrical captain judges whether you and your partner are worthy of sailing on together. The tonal shift works. Without a dense mythology to front-load, the game wastes no time dropping both players into its first puzzle, and that directness is a relief. The structure is lean and intentional. Three main trials, each testing a different axis of cooperation, sit inside a canal-connected park that you traverse by small boat between challenges. The first puzzle, the Crewmates Carousel, is a timed symbol-matching exercise where one player sees a puppet striking a pose and the other holds the key to identifying it, demanding fast, clean verbal handoffs. The second is a color-matching tile and totem challenge split across two separate rooms, where placing a tile on one side opens a pillar slot on the other, and both players must coordinate letter designations across a push-to-talk walkie-talkie that only carries one voice at a time. That one-way radio mechanic is the game's smartest constraint: the antenna light flashing red mid-explanation creates real urgency, and figuring out your own shorthand with a partner is quietly satisfying. The third trial, the trust sequence, sends one player through an obstacle course while the other navigates hallucinogen-induced disorientation, relying entirely on their partner's guidance through invisible walkways. It is the clear highlight, and the one most likely to produce either genuine laughter or a brief silence where a friendship is re-evaluated. The bronze, silver, and gold ranking system per puzzle is a smart addition. Finishing on bronze moves you forward without punishment, but the ticket-shredding retry machine means perfectionists can loop a trial as many times as they like in pursuit of gold, and those upgrades visibly improve the state of your literal FriendShip by the end, capped by a personalized QR-code video souvenir that logs your run. It is the kind of small craft detail that rewards the players who care without gating anything from those who do not. The audio does real work here too: the pirate-park soundscape is atmospheric in a way that evokes something between a fairground and a dream, and the voice acting from the presiding captain lands with genuine charm. The honest caveats are few but real. Runtime sits between one and three hours for most pairs, stretching to six only if gold-hunting on every trial. Veterans of We Were Here Forever may find the scale of ambition noticeably smaller. The graphics default to their lowest settings on first launch, so nudging those up is the first thing worth doing. And the walkie-talkie push-to-talk, while immersive, does create friction if you are used to open-voice co-op games. For newcomers to the series, though, none of that stings. This is the most welcoming entry point the franchise has ever offered: compact, well-paced, and confident enough to know exactly when it ends.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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