This week, we were supposed to go to our escape rooms.  However, since those have been canceled so that we can all self-quarantine, we instead played We Were Here.  I found this game to be very interesting, especially relating it to what we discussed in class on Tuesday about possibility spaces and other dynamics of a game.  In We Were Here, there are two players: one is an explorer, and one is the librarian.  The librarian mostly remains in the same room throughout the game and has to help the explorer navigate a variety of rooms to reach the final stage.  Together, the players need to solve puzzles to get to the next challenge.  

In We Were Here, the players get basically zero clues as to what they need to do.  It is entirely up to you to navigate the room and figure out how to solve the puzzle.  Since you cannot see your teammates’ screen and they cannot see yours, communication is very important in this game.  You must describe a variety of shapes that look very similar to each other so that you can figure out what symbols match the ones on your teammates’ screen.  This also reminded me of the week before spring break in which we all played games where we needed to communicate and work together. We Were Here is largely a game about working together.  You both want to survive, so you need to talk to each other and coordinate with each other in order to do this.  However, at the end, there is a big twist (spoiler alert!). You go from wanting to help each other to possibly being against each other.  The last puzzle is you escaping the building; however, in order to open the gate, one person has to stand on the button.  That means only one person is able to escape, and you have to decide who. This can often pit friends against each other, since no one wants to get left behind.  In this way, it goes from a cooperative game to a slightly competitive game. However, the interesting fact lies in the way that different people all play the game differently.  Sometimes, it’s not competitive, and someone is happy to let their friend go and sacrifice themselves. That’s the beauty of a game – everyone has a different experience playing it!  The fact that the game doesn’t offer very many clues also shows how different it is compared to possibility spaces in other games.