How is everyone doing? It's been a busy month but we've been making steady progress. In fact, we can finally reveal some exciting news... at the end of this post ;)

We can tell you that we're participating in the Tokyo Game Show this year, with some awesome news! If you aren't following the event, you can find it at the end of this post as well. The Tokyo Game Show is always an exciting event with some big announcements and trailers to enjoy - and we're always curious to see what's popular in other parts of the world. We'd love to attract new We Were Here fans from Japan and Asia more generally! If you'd like to check out the event yourself, Inverse has a nice article on how and when to watch.

Which announcements are you hyped for?


How the show looked in years past. It's all online for 2020.

Some of the puzzles in our games can be more easily solved with the aid of pen and paper, as player QAQAQAQAQ has discovered. Some great drawings here!



We're pleased to see people taking notes, because the We Were Here series is inspired in part by the legacy of classic adventure game Myst - did you know that Myst actually came with a notepad in the game box itself! You can see a cool image of someone's notes from this fun Reddit thread!


We have a great announcement for console fans today - those of you following our social media might already have figured it out - the We Were Here series is coming to PlayStation 4 soon! No dates yet, but we'll let you know whenever we have something firmed up. Follow our social media for all the latest news and We Were Here developments! And don't forget: keep your eyes open, because we will probably have more hidden messages in the coming months...


Do you see the circle in this image? There were four other images that had a triangle, cross and square. Put them together, and you got the PS4 controller buttons!

We released an update today which fixes a couple of issues with the Steam rich presence display, and adjusts the Russian translation on the final puzzle to be more clear. It also adds localization support for a bunch of new languages!

New Languages

• Arabic
  
• Czech
  
• Danish
  
• Finnish
  
• Italian
  
• Norwegian
  
• Portuguese
  
• Portuguese (Brazil)
  
• Swedish
  
• Thai
  
• Turkish

Do you recognize these locations from player screenshots? We love to see folks making use of the Steam screenshot uploader :D


A relaxing sea view by Garsupial.


Player Joni is indulging in a spot of gardening.


Probably not the safest lift you've ever used... by player GRIBABAS.

While we've been hard at work on our future projects (you're gonna love them), we've also made the time to put together some We Were Here bonus materials! Have a look and see if anything takes your fancy...

We made some pretty animated library capsules for our games. You can download our cool library capsules here!



To add them, go to your Steam library, find the game in the shelves to the right (not in the summary list), and right click on it. Then choose Manage > Set custom artwork, and choose your image! You could even make every game in your library look like We Were Here, if you wanted.



Are you planning a We Were Here stream? Or maybe you just really like the WWH aesthetic? Either way, good news with this We Were Here series streamer kit! Contains all the visual elements you need to stream in spooky Antarctic style: get it here.

You can grab the We Were Here Together soundtrack right now! Featuring 16 songs with 61 minutes of evocative music, it'll conjure that Castle Rock vibe in no time. There's even a 10% launch discount right now - move fast!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1246990/We_Were_Here_Together_Original_Soundtrack/

Did you know the We Were Here series is available on Xbox One? Well it is, and you can now get all three games together in the We Were Here bundle!

Speaking of bundles, We Were Here Together is part of this month's Humble Bundle Humble Choice games! If you're looking to play and don't have a regular partner, this month might be a good time to meet someone new who's just got the game ;)

Well, a whole lot of stuff! We recently released an update with some nice fixes and improvements. Read the full changelog here. Of course we've been working hard to finish up the Xbox One release of We Were Here Together, making sure everything is looking good there - because it releases today! Yep, all three games are now out on Xbox One as well - we're looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks!

This means the whole series to date is available on the Xbox - it's still so cool for us to see our puzzle game concept go from one title on PC all the way to a three part series on PCs and console, with more exciting things to come as well!




If you hadn't noticed, We Were Here Together is on sale right now, but not for much longer. You can currently grab the game for 25% off!


We couldn't go another news post without sharing more fan art! We loved this funny scene drawn by WWH player Blue and posted to our artwork page. Maybe check it out sometime - there's art, gifs, memes... all that good stuff.

We have a new update for you today! There are performance improvements, more colliders to prevent those rare moments of falling out of the level, and some desync fixes.

Added

• Animated dots show at the bottom right when the game is busy loading
  
• Increased auto-crouch trigger size downstairs after entering the monastery
  
• Xbox related objects added to the basecamp

Fixed:

• Players should no longer be able to walk off the left pickaxe elevator
  
• Fixed an issue causing the castle entrance puzzle not to start
  
• Fixed overall missing colliders causing players to fall through the world
  
• Optimized performance-heavy fog
  
• Increased default voice chat volume
  
• Accepting an invite just before entering gameplay from a lobby no longer leaves the other player in the void
  
• Fixed an issue with rejoining your own lobby
  
• DLC Store page languages now match those displayed on the base game store page
  
• Fixed overall texture and mesh issues
  
• Rapidly bashing the elevator buttons won't get visually stuck anymore
  
• Disabled puzzle item interaction after completing the Greenhouse area preventing players from taking unnecessary items to the next chapter
  
• Fixed an issue with the pipes where the puzzle would not complete after placing the correct pipes
  
• Fixed a desync issue with the throne room statues puzzle
  
• Fixed visual mismatch of items picked up in the mirror room and the image displayed in the inventory
  
• Fixed an issue where the basecamp fuel docks did not load in completely
  
• Fixed visual errors with some fog areas
  
• Audio of the first throne room puzzle no longer overlaps with the cutscene audio

Known Issues:

• After the voice chat system connects both players in a session, the application volume in the OS is forced to 100%

Geoff was already featured in an interesting blog post on Agora.io last week, which we'd recommend taking a look at if you're interested in games dev. This week you can get more insights into the We Were Here series and more as Geoff will be taking part in an Airmeet event organized by Agora.io, happening today! What can you expect exactly? We're glad you asked!

Two industry leaders in social gaming, Geoff van den Ouden, Producer of Total Mayhem Games, and Selcuk Atli, CEO of Bunch, will share their insights on how to make games more engaging through social connection, and why you should ditch Discord and add live voice and video directly inside your game

There will also be a Q/A session and a social networking time towards the end, as well as some tips and tricks to increase a game's user base and session times!

If that sounds good to you, check out the event here!

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.