We Were Here Expeditions: The Friendship Review

Take a pleasing dive into another exceptional journey by top puzzle developers, Total Mayhem Games. Swap out your winter gear, because this adventure dons pirate hats!

If you haven’t been living under a proverbial online rock for the last few years, you’ve undoubtedly observed the surge in demand for more social gaming experiences. Rising to meet this demand is the surprise stealth drop of the newest addition to the renowned We Were Here series, celebrated for its engagingly designed co-op adventures.

We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip offers a familiar blend of adventure, collaboration, and challenge as seen in previous episodes, with outcomes influenced by trusted friends or even unpredictable strangers. What’s not to adore?

We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip is touted as a co-operative puzzle adventure, tasking players to navigate through a series of ‘escape room’ styled trials. The game is exclusively multiplayer and is designed to be played (solved?) with another player, emphasising communication, coordination, logic, and fun. Fret not if you don’t have an immediate chum to call on, there’s online matchmaking with a myriad of locale servers and yes, importantly, we have cross-play.

On loading, you’re greeted with a gloomy cutscene - your intrepid explorers are aboard a slightly ramshackle looking vessel and are, well, in a bit of hot water. The expedition doesn’t appear to be going so well, cue some cliches about sailing round in circles… to paraphrase, you’re lost. Visually, the cartoon graphics are decent - the accompanying music is wonderfully atmospheric and does well to set the scene in a rousing and pirate-like fashion.

When the cutscene ends, you’re straight into it. Where are you? Not sure, but there’s snow. No boat. Oh. What now? Well, the other player is here, you’re both equipped in some fetching fur coats with a walkie-talkie each and thus begins the start of the adventure, time to don those thinking caps.

Eventually, you happen upon an abandoned amusement park, before gingerly setting off on a boat ride that falls somewhere between ‘It’s a Small World’ at Disneyland and the psychedelic horror ship from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

There are small bits of humor interspersed around the areas with a slightly maniacal matriarch who absolutely rams the concept of communication and ‘testing your friendship’ down your throat… all whilst pleasingly whizzing through some general scenes with mild spooky peril. You’ll need to complete all three trials, and yes, as you’ve probably heard numerous times by now - it’s all about your communication skills.

The core mechanics of the game are simple and intuitive - to solve puzzles and progress through the game, you’ll be walking around, looking around, interacting with objects, and using your walkie-talkie to communicate with the other player. Yes, walkie-talkie. Instant fun, but more on that later. Everything is designed for two people, you’ll also be taking separate paths through the trials.

We Were Here Expeditions: The Friendship is a game that both appeals to and can be easily picked up and played by anybody, regardless of age and ability. Commendation has to go to the devs for pulling off an immersive game with relatively straight-forward mechanics that importantly, at no point feels like it’s lacking anything. Neither are the controls sluggish, which turns out to be quite important later on. There’s a nice tutorial to walk you through the controls - some will no doubt linger joyously on the ‘emote bustin’ section. There’s also a slight zoom function, but any good time to use or need this wasn’t apparent.

At the heart of this game lies communication, and it won’t let you forget it. Every element here, from the puzzle design, visuals, and even whimsy, has been crafted around this core concept. At one point you’ll be having to relay, describe, and decipher symbols to your pal timed, because, why not give a total stranger a hectic descriptive heart attack? More of a ‘communication adventure’ than a puzzle game, per se.

In-game communication is facilitated through - you guessed it - a push-to-talk walkie-talkie. After pressing push to talk there is a slight delay, which at times could feel a tad sluggish - although this is probably by design to add an additional time-sensitive panic element. Bearing in mind that for most of the game you cannot see the other player, (or indeed what they see on their screen), you are forced and encouraged to describe your experience to them. In true walkie-talkie style it’s only one-way comms, (you can’t hear the other person talking whilst you are), so keep the dinner chat brief. A red light appears on the antenna before an incoming communication from the other player - which at certain times can almost induce frenzy to stop describing lest you miss an important instruction. Cue some hilarious ‘over and out’ moments with the aforementioned pal. The walkie-talkie mechanic adds a layer of enjoyable realism to the social experience, voice chat in the game was smooth and clear.

The game doesn’t really hold your hand, yet it’s easy to get to grips with. Solving the right puzzle combinations and getting a perfect score however can get a little more tricky, if you’re the type of trailblazer who absolutely has to get everything perfect the first time then this perhaps isn’t for you. The puzzles themselves are well designed - based on the ever-present themes of coordination, cooperation, communication, logic, and timing. Did you notice the S in FriendShip? Yet, players have enough freedom and scope to approach, fix, or communicate the issues or problems facing them as they wish, despite the necessary linear-level design. The facilitation of interpersonal communication is the total strength of this game, and what has clearly made players love the series so far.

Although it’s understandable why in-game communication was designed to be one way only, it does however miss off some naturally funny or engaging moments that you would expect to have with your friends in any social game, such as laughing in unison when you both finally realize the solution has been brazenly staring down your degree-wielding faces for a good twenty minutes. This is only a minor point though and completely changes with familiarity of the other player, for example, perhaps a welcome relief if you end up with a super chatty stranger online, or infuriating, if they never get off their walkie-talkie.

Playing through third-party voice software will mean you definitely lose some of the immersion and intent with the puzzle design, such as the timed ‘Crewmates Carousel’ where you both have to describe a cheeky pirate chappy, that only you see, which you must then correlate with the other player to find the solution. Speaking in turn leaves each player less time to think, poses far more risk, more challenge, pressure to make mistakes…the ability to speak at the same time (read: interrupt each other), and you’re losing all of this.

Replayability? Player dependent, leaning towards minimal, but not non-existent. The puzzle solutions will be different each time, but if one of you is going in blind and the other isn’t, it’s just not going to be as satisfying as working everything out together, otherwise naturally the more experienced will lead. The world is a bit linear but any more open world and we lose strength in being open to all players, however, it’s engaging and looks nice enough that you’d like to have a little more to look around at in your own time. I hope there are some secrets the more eagle-eyed might spot!

Adding to the difficulty, there’s a medal system to each puzzle. You need a minimum score to pass a ‘trial’, with gold, silver or bronze being awarded for the level to which you have completed the puzzles. If you’re not a perfectionist then you’re pretty much done after one or two runs, but playing this with different friends offers up different challenges. Having said that, this is a game designed to be enjoyed by everybody, without being super infuriating or impossible for anybody either. There will be just as many young people that play this as adults, with another commendation on how difficult it is to make a puzzle game that appeals to both young and old, whilst being suitably challenging yet engaging and intuitive for all age groups too.

The medal system ties in quite nicely with this, and enhances replayability if you’d like to beat your score. Healthy competition between friends or strangers is definitely fostered - the sense of satisfaction from completing a puzzle however falls largely with how triumphant the other player is acting - sure, you get a nice little ‘puppet theatre show’ at the end of each puzzle which might amuse some, and an overall rating at the end to improve.

Overall, this was enjoyable. The theme and story are largely forgettable yet not ill-made, everything feels quality here - but the social and eureka moments between humans that this game facilitates are unmissable. Without wanting to spoil it, the process of achieving a gold medal on the last trial will involve screaming frantic instructions at the other player.