That's right, We Were Here Together is set to release June 5 on Xbox One!


Let your console owning friends and family know ;)

This is great news for all the new console fans who experienced the We Were Here series for the first time when we released the earlier games on Xbox One last year. We can't wait to see what they think!

To celebrate this great news, we also have a 25% sale for everyone on PC too!


A screenshot of a sinister scene by Scorpiorange!

We're making great progress on We Were Here Together for Xbox One - so much so, that we can announce the release date! Console fans set your calendars for June 5th.



To celebrate this great news, we have a 25% sale for everyone on PC right now! If you've had your eye on We Were Here Together, now's the time to grab it!


We also have a collection of awesome fan art!


Awesome work by player Nanofu!


This heartwarming piece by PapaNini.

We can't wait to share what we've been working on! Thanks to everyone who filled out the We Were Here survey, we've been going carefully through the results and there's a lot of valuable feedback there. We'd also like to take a moment to salute the brave 193 (20% of respondents) who said that 'jump scares' are what they enjoy most in puzzles :D

This Friday is Valentine’s Day! For this special occasion, we want to match you with someone!

Whether you are looking for a special someone, a new friend, or just a nice co-op partner, we will try to find you the perfect match. There’s no better way to get to know someone than trying to solve puzzles together, after all!

We are even giving away a few Steam keys for We Were Here Too and We Were Here Together in a raffle, so you might get lucky!

The Christmas lights have been put away, and the basecamp returns to the usual cosy quietness. Our special Christmas puzzle is finished - we hope you all enjoyed it, and the fireworks that were your reward for solving it!


Here they are, in case you missed it ;)

We have some exciting plans in the pipeline for the new year - nothing to announce just yet, but watch this space!

For those of you with strong opinions, we're running a survey covering topics like what you enjoy most about the We Were Here series, what kind of projects you'd like us to work on next if you were queen/king for a day, and more. After filling it out, you'll be entered into a raffle with a chance to win some We Were Here merch!

Take the survey!

The survey is closed, thanks to everyone who filled it in!

The holidays are almost here and we have a number of special Christmas surprises for you explorers. As befits the holiday season, your basecamp has been decorated and a new puzzle has appeared… somewhere. Let’s see if you and a friend can figure out where it is, and how to solve it. If you succeed, the festivities can begin!



This past year was quite an adventure for us at the studio, full of intriguing puzzles and great highlights! One of the most memorable moments for us was the release of We Were Here Together - it was humbling to see our game in the top steam sellers for October 2019. To date we've almost sold 100,000 copies of We Were Here Together. Thank you all for your support!

To get a peek at how the year was for us developers, take a look at our series of Developer Diaries series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tThcTabRnU&list=PLHCVEMHWZo4TZVWjKAiVw0VcvQkOm_-Po
Three episodes are live already, and the fourth and final installment will be live on December 30th!

Another cherished moment was the release of We Were Here and We Were Here Too on Xbox One. The inclusion of We Were Here in the ‘Games for Gold’ helped introduce a lot of new players to the series. We can’t wait to release We Were Here Together on Xbox One as well in 2020!

We’ve also been nominated as one of the top 100 games in the Adventure category on IndieDB. With less than two days of voting left, your support would be greatly appreciated!

We also would like to take the time to thank the community for another awesome year, our partners for their great support and we want to wish you all happy Holidays and hopefully a new year with even more awesomeness for you all.

New Features:

• Added a christmas themed puzzle to the basecamp.
  
• Revamp of the default controls. Player who have played before will keep their settings.
  
• Skipping a cutscene is now done by a HOLD action.

Resolved Voice Issues:

• The incoming voice volume is no longer bound to master volume. This should fix some volume issues with the voice chat.
  
• Added experimental audio settings - marked in yellow - to test out. We would love to hear any feedback regarding the functionality of these settings. (The ‘Microphone level’ slider is set to your system level by default. Adjustments are directly applied to your system microphone level)

Resolved Issues:

• Intro animation Wall is now synced properly.
  
• Mirror Room paintings should no longer fully rotate when clicked once.
  
• Players should no longer be able to jump in or out of a rotating door in the cave while it is rotating to prevent softlocking.
  
• Added proper controller button images to the menu.
  
• Fixed several desync issues in the mirror room.
  
• The purple orb pistons should now be retract on both sides in the mirror room.
  
• Optimized a ton of meshes throughout the game increasing performance.
  
• Selected button behaviour in the menus should now be more intuitive and consistent.
  
• Fixed several audio effects.
  
• Fixed some edge cases around inviting and leaving a session just before starting.
  
• Gamepad horizontal/vertical look speed should feel more consistent now.
  
• Changed some visual UI elements throughout the game.
  
• Fixed several seams in meshes throughout the game.
  
• Fixed an issue where spamming the ‘switch side’ button in the lobby would cause a desync.
  
• The Jester's laugh no longer cuts out during the alchemy cutscene.
  
• Added some additional sound effects throughout the game.
  
• Fixed an issue where players would end up in a softlock if their partner disconnected when inspecting a world element.
  
• In-game menu should now work properly with a D-pad.

Known Issues we (still) intend to fix:

• Looking for a substitute for performance-heavy fog.
  
• Desync of player position in rotatable doors.
  
• Credits will be made legible.
  
• Textures that might be incorrect.
  
• Visual inconsistencies in the throne room.
  
• Falling through the world in some specific edge cases.
  
• Several game freezes.

New features we are looking into:

• Color blind support.
  
• Additional voice chat options.
  
• Collectables.
  
• Additional checkpoints for Chapter 7.

The latest developer diary video about the creation of We Were Here Together is here! The series gives you an insight on the creation of the co-op puzzle adventure. In this third episode, the designers are reliving the process of coming up with and creating the puzzles of We Were Here. But what about testing? We might have some extraordinary ways to do so…
Watch the episode below:

The latest developer diary is all about how the team created the environments of We Were Here Together, incorporated puzzles into them, and brought Castle Rock to life. This four part series gives you an insight into the game development process at Total Mayhem Games, and how We Were Here Together came to life! Watch the episode below:

It's update time again! We have tweaks for visual issues, collision, and some performance issues, not to mention some more fixes for walkie-talkie issues. We are particularly interested to hear if the issue with picking up microphones correctly is fixed. Future updates will see continued work on performance as well alongside more general bug squashing.
New Features

• Added holiday event: Saint Nicholas
  
• Improved the game over screen visuals
  
• Added missing sound effects

Resolved Issues

• Microphone should be picked up correctly for everyone who was having issues. If your problem still exists, please report again.
  
• Walkie-talkie lighting up when you are talking instead of when your partner is talking
  
• Final decision moment radial button speed now properly matches the corresponding animation, to visually match what’s happening behind the scenes
  
• Missing logbook entries are now added when starting from a checkpoint
  
• Improved overall menu usability
  
• Improved gamepad usability
  
• Increased gamepad sensitivity range
  
• Improved water shader performance
  
• Fixed a couple of in game visual glitches
  
• Fixed issue in the mirror room allowing players to pick up a book through walls
  
• Fixed reported collider issues throughout

What we are working on

• Final decision moment will better pick up the intent of the player, instead of the princess taking over control while you’re in the process of sacrificing someone
  
• Credits will be made legible
  
• Investigating an issue where disconnecting during an inspect locks you in that inspect
  
• Looking for a substitute for performance-heavy fog
  
• Investigating what we can do about a rare throne room desync event

Please let us know if these fixes work for you, and keep on posting reports of any new issues you encounter via Discord or the feedback subforum. All feedback is much appreciated!

Hi everyone!
My name is Leon van der Stel and I'll be talking today about the creation of the main theme for We Were Here Together.
The first and second We Were Here games share the same main theme. For the third entry in the series, we wanted a new main theme - the classic We Were Here atmosphere in a new jacket. I would like to take you into the story behind the main theme and the choices that were made along the way. At different sections I'll link to audio clips. These are interim versions and ideas for the main theme that show the development process well.

For the people who want to play the main theme themselves, I made sheet music, which you can find at the end of this dev diary. Finally, I want to thank Jos Platschorre for helping to compose the main theme with his grandiose guitar playing, and Tom Hartman for his support and feedback.


The author, making music.

The most important thing with each piece of music is which feeling it must express. Since We Were Here Together is about two explorers alone in Antarctica, the terms cold, deserted and isolated occurred to me. Although these were good terms, there was still something missing in my opinion. In the story, the other two explorers become hopeful when their emergency signal is fired into the air. Therefore the word hope should also be included in the overall picture.

Now that the atmosphere has been determined, how do you implement this, and with which instruments? This is a question that you can only answer by getting started and carefully directing the result at every step. Having said that, I thought it would be cool to take the first steps with some guitar.

This idea was inspired by the OST of The Last of Us, and it was in line with the direction which the TMG team and I wanted to go. My goal was to raise the standard to produce a greater result and I felt that this could only be achieved by involving other musicians. Fortunately I knew a good guitarist, Jos Platschorre, whose playing style would fit well with what I had in mind. After a phone call he agreed to help me to make something beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvNF51-TSAQ&list=RDDvNF51-TSAQ&start_radio=1&t=0
Below are some of the first jams with Jos that had the most impact on the end result:

Jam 1A: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hBcBzJ6AHzFiIa8lKR-POas_0cztGHF1
Jam 1B: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vXODQNocPnziMArbSZu-jo5S2QHL4jbn
Jam 2: https://drive.google.com/open?id=19M0KITCgaRhj0bCu0_wk_Rgs2VbA8F5n

When listening to the above jams, several parts immediately jumped out that fit well with the new main theme vibe. Keeping in mind the cold and isolated atmosphere, the start of jam 2 was very satisfying. This stayed into place since then. After jam 1A was recorded, I had the impression that a strum style could fit in boldly with this (jam 1B). Although the Total Mayhem Games team was delighted with the vibe of these early jams, a simple and recognizable melody was still missing. Based on these jams, I came up with the following melody, to be played on the piano. The chord changes, the guitar style and the melody were the starting point for the next step.

Jam 3 - Piano melody: https://drive.google.com/open?id=13WdJvoi7V5Gr9ewBu8Dq953SpYKe6sGF

The following fragment contains the points above combined with the melody partially incorporated. In the second part I experimented with midi controller pads and vocals.

Jam 4: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FvuxmTSr_Bda9ys4DZJZ0VotSRsYS3aq

At this point it was starting to become more viable and I was pleased with how the melody was incorporated with the guitar scrum. However, it still didn’t jive just yet; it sounded more like a loop. I was fortunate at this point to get some good advice from talented musician Tom Hartman on how it could potentially be turned into a good swinging melody that tells a story. Below is a take that he sent during a meeting. This recording inspired me during the composition of the end result.

Jam 5: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1T3fy3hIFwqJBtkhlFWiVVMymqaCbXcnk

So with this new jam in mind, I went back to the drawing board. The following jam (which is divided into two audio clips) was created by editing the old jams to be closer to the feel of Tom's recorded take (jam 5). Based on these new ideas, I selected a high pitched piano to incorporate into the theme - this piano with a lot of echo gave a hopeful feeling, which you’ll recall is one of the expressions I added to my list at the beginning.

Jam 6: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1x4jtyLCMuY-arcSdi3HBxjAuhojQOFKs
Jam 7: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eJB9MhZTF1i-l95vfVN5GVHVV75YcLWM


This is NOT what the composition process looked like, for the record.

As you can see, every decision at each step has had a part in shaping the music into what it is today. Although many ideas were collected, a complete composition was still missing. Even though the individual parts sounded good, the overall composition is what makes or breaks it as a piece of music. From this point on, I didn't want to create new content anymore, but instead wanted to use what I had.

During this stage, the guitarist and I tried various parts on the spot in different combinations and listened for what felt best. Afterwards the composition was recorded in six takes. The last addition that has been made to the main theme was done by not ending with the tonic. This gives a dissonant / out-of-place feeling that is also in line with some of our aforementioned expressions: cold, deserted and isolated.

And so, the final composition was:

Intro: Beginning of Jam 3
Section A: Main tune (Jam 6 + Jam 7)
Section B: Start Jam 2 with the main guitar style of the main tune
Section C: Section A, but layered with high pitched piano and pads

https://youtu.be/61kT23qnRGo

In summary, it has been a long journey. My secret ingredient is taking little steps, building upon things that feel right along the way, and to simply ask for help when necessary to get to the next stage. This is not just for music! The same strategy could be applied to all things and decisions in life.

If you are interested in playing the theme yourself, don't forget to check the main theme sheet music below. If you prefer just listening, you should visit our new Spotify channel! Peace out :D

Main Theme sheet music links
Interactive online: https://flat.io/score/5d73748133d5ed32e1fc61d1-we-were-here-together-main-theme?sharingKey=93101f350e5331c1530d8eaae0cef7960c0cc9249bb4d065446c8be2936d13a04b2af7e6347f9a94aceeccadafc70dbffe8b0a7f7a6f1025898b49db068fd90e
PDF: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1blfLqwVgHn9YvQVsVNtza-6dfB1jv7ia

Cheers Leon

Good news everybody! Earlier this week we released a hotfix which should resolve the issues with microphone volume dropping, and now we've just released a larger update with even more in it.

Fixes included in this patch

• Issues related to microphone levels have been resolved.
  
• Added cross region friend invites.
  
• Added a toggle in the gameplay settings that will make sure you connect to the region with the lowest ping. (Auto select region).
  
• Added controller navigation support to the banners in the main menu.
  
• Added translations for the keybinding panel.
  
• Added the ability to select a different region when the connection in the title screen fails.
  
• Added the ability to see what chapter is selected before joining a game.
  
• Fixed some UI navigation issues.
  
• Fixed an instance where the lobby background and chapter name would not be updated correctly.
  
• The correct background is now shown for chapter 6 in the lobby.
  
• You no longer receive a “Connection Established” popup when switching regions.
  
• Fixed some minor visual errors in the game hud.
  
• Fixed several instances of inventory items showing up through cutscenes.
  
• Fixed an instance where the candle would not be visible.
  
• Fixed a visual glitch where the candle would be visible for a single frame when scrolling through the inventory.
  
• Fixed an instance where players would clip through the ceiling in forced crouch areas when opening the menu.
  
• Subtitles in the basecamp should be more consistent now.
  
• Snow and Cloud particles should no longer be visible when inside the basecamp.
  
• You can no longer get stuck behind the outside door in the basecamp.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could solve the clock puzzle with only one correct dial.
  
• The board of the alchemy puzzle is now properly interactable.
  
• Fixed a missing door after passing through the royal passage.
  
• Removed a button click sound effect during the intro cutscene of the throne room.
  
• The jester's face now disappears in the game-over screen.
  
• Keybindings for the decision moment are now correctly bound to the correct keys.
  
• Reworked a lot of the rotating statue puzzle in the throne room to resolve de-sync issues. (let us know if this has truly fixed the issue).
  
• Improved performance in the throne room.
  
• All steam achievements are now hidden to avoid spoilers.
  
• Added some Halloween decorations to the basecamp.

What we are working on

• Proper implementation for microphone auto leveling.
  
• Revamp of the control schemes.
  
• Ability to select a checkpoint for all puzzles in the Overgrown chapter.
  
• Collectibles that can be found throughout the game.
  
• Audio leveling throughout the game.
  
• Resolve performance drop caused by the volumetric fog.
  
• An issue when 2 players try to join the same game at the same time.
  
• Investigating an issue in the mirror room where the rotatable titles spin 360 degrees instead of 90 degrees.
  
• Investigating an issue in the bridge puzzle where the clamps don’t always update correctly.
  
• Investigating an issue where push to talk events are not sent to the other player, resulting in the voice chat not working at all.
  
• General bug fixes for puzzles.
  
• Loading speed optimizations.
  
• General performance optimizations.

As always, let us know if these fixes work for you, and keep on posting reports of any new issues you encounter via Discord or the feedback subforum. All feedback is much appreciated!