We Were Here

We Were Here strands two players in an abandoned castle inspired by Antarctica's Castle Rock, splitting them between separate areas and giving each a different half of every puzzle, with a walkie-talkie as the only tool to bridge the gap. Released for free in February 2017 as the pilot episode of what became a full series, it built a strongly positive following — 90% Very Positive across 1,093 English reviews — anchored in genuine appreciation for its central concept, running into a specific, widely reported technical problem that has apparently persisted for years.

A concept reviewers still credit as genuinely clever

The core praise for We Were Here's asymmetric communication puzzle is consistent even from reviewers looking back at it after playing the series' later, more polished entries. One reviewer explains: "I played We Were Here with the same person I later played through the rest of the series with, and even the first game immediately won us over. The basic concept is simple but incredibly effective: you are separated from each other and can only communicate via radio." A second, more measured, describes the value even for those replaying it: "we even played it for a second time with swapped roles... it was fun to see what the other person had been seeing this whole time." That's genuine, specific credit for a structural idea — total information asymmetry solved purely through verbal communication — that clearly still lands even years after the franchise it started has moved well beyond it.

A specific bug reviewers say has never been fixed

Set against that praise is the sample's most serious, most convergent technical complaint. One reviewer states it precisely: "Everything was fine until the buggy chess board sequence. Others have complained. Developer is 'aware' of the issue as posted in 2017, but the issues were never fixed." Another, independently: "Started out as fun but we very quickly encountered a bug during a chess puzzle that kept us from progressing. Restarting and reinstalling the game did not help. Inexcusable for a 7 year old game." A third corroborates the same specific sequence: "DON'T SAY 'HEY BUY MY BUNDLE' TO JUST HAVE A SUPER BUGGY CHESS PUZZLE... nothing but non responsive aspects on both librarian and explorer aspects." Three independent, specific accounts of the identical failure point — a particular puzzle sequence that simply doesn't function correctly — is strong enough convergence to treat as a real, persistent characteristic of the game rather than an isolated incident.

What the achievement data confirms

Global achievement statistics line up closely with that complaint. Puzzles earlier in the sequence — painting, water, and eyes — sit at a healthy 48-62% completion, but chess-specific milestones fall to 36-45%, a meaningful drop relative to what came before. Completion falls further still for the theater puzzle and both endings, down to roughly 13-30%, and a full perfect playthrough sits at just 7.3%. That steady, compounding decline is consistent with reviewer accounts of a specific technical wall partway through the game that a real share of players never get past.

Presentation complaints beyond the central bug

Beyond the chess-puzzle issue, a smaller cluster of complaints concerns basic clarity. One reviewer notes: "the game has a few issues with readability and UI which make the game less fun and more frustrating to play," while another reports: "the game is also super dark in many areas and makes important aspects hard to see. Put my brightness up all the way and still had a lot of trouble." A separate reviewer flags a specific narrative-design complaint: "There is a teased 'good ending' to get both players out, which heavily implies there is a way to get both players out. there is not" — a detail that reads as a deliberate tonal choice but which more than one reviewer experienced as simply misleading.

A franchise that grew well beyond this starting point

It's worth noting plainly that Total Mayhem Games has continued investing heavily in the We Were Here series since this free pilot episode, with recent cross-play updates, console ports, and a new entry, We Were Here Tomorrow, announced for later in 2026. One reviewer frames the original game's place in that larger context fairly: "it's hard to recommend the original We Were Here... but from the perspective of the franchise as a whole, it does offer a cool window into the origins of We Were Here, and it's obvious that the seeds of many great ideas are already" present. That's a reasonable way to think about this specific entry today — valuable as an origin point and a free taste of the concept, even if its own specific bugs haven't kept pace with the studio's clearly still-active development elsewhere.

Verdict

We Were Here's central hook — total communication-dependent puzzle-solving between two players who can't see what the other sees — remains genuinely clever, and it's a reasonable, zero-cost introduction to a series that has grown considerably since. A specific, well-documented, and apparently still-unresolved bug in its chess puzzle sequence is a real risk for anyone trying to finish it today, corroborated directly by a meaningful achievement-completion cliff at exactly that point. Worth trying because it costs nothing; don't be surprised if you get stuck.

Sources: Steam store page and appdetails API (release date, pricing, platform data); Steam's aggregate review data (query_summary totals, English-language sample); individually read user reviews, both positive and negative, sorted by helpfulness and recency; Steam's global achievement statistics API; Total Mayhem Games' own partner-events history from 2017 through 2026.