Story and series timeline
You and a partner are Explorers trapped under Antarctic ice inside a Norček Industries facility, briefed by Director Kathleen Bowe to finish her missing team's work on Rift Zero. The story is standalone: you can play Tomorrow without any earlier We Were Here game.
You are an Explorer on an expedition to rescue other Explorers, and the rescue goes wrong. You wake under the ice of Antarctica inside a facility belonging to Norček Industries, briefed by Director Kathleen Bowe, and asked to finish the work her missing research team abandoned.
The premise
The developer's own description sets it up: while on an expedition to save fellow Explorers, you and your partner are "victims of bad timing" and become trapped beneath the ice. When you wake, the world is not the one you remember. The Director's team was on the verge of a breakthrough and has vanished, a global crisis is looming, and she asks you to continue where they left off. You complete tasks through the facility, often separated, relying on walkie-talkies, and the deeper you go the more questions surface: what is Norček trying to achieve, why were you brought here, and what happened to those who came before you.
Who Kathleen Bowe is
Bowe is the voice on the other end of the facility for most of the game, and she is also "K.B." — the initials on the leaked internal research archive Total Mayhem Games published before launch. That ARG framed it as an anonymous delivery of a complete research archive with a single note: "These were never meant to leave the facility." Many documents were signed K.B., and the narrative made clear this person did not merely document the research — she was personally and obsessively involved in it.
So the Director was framed from the first announcement as a researcher with a stake in the work, not a corporate administrator — and the opening briefing leans on that: she is not neutral.
Norček Industries, in the record
The facility's history arrives through the pre-launch documents, and half the environmental storytelling assumes you know it. Norček emerged suddenly and expanded globally — breakthroughs, new operations, and large research facilities in Antarctica built to investigate "the anomaly discovered in the 1940s". Witnesses reported an incident over the continent: an explosion, a "rip in the sky". Recruitment ran at unusual scale, across disciplines, all Antarctica-based.
One detail matters for you specifically: Norček recovered "a set of yellow and red equipment belonging to earlier Explorers", judged the suits underqualified, and built new expedition suits optimised for durability, mobility, environmental resistance and communication integration. That is the in-fiction reason for what the two of you are wearing.
Rift Zero and goop
The research notes describe work on anomalous environments, and one location keeps recurring: Rift Zero.
Two things came out of it. First, plant-like species "strangely familiar" to the researchers, whose structures and behaviour fit no known classification and which some documents link directly to the Rift; Norček's response was not observation but "controlled cultivation and experimentation". Second, crystallised minerals, including one that "can expand, contract, and alter its structure when in contact with one of the earlier found organisms" — the researchers called it goop, and later documents show plans to turn it into a tool "capable of forming temporary structures through controlled crystallisation". That is the Goop Gun in your hands.
What the achievements say about the ending
The last six unlocks run: Through the Looking Glass (ventured Beyond the Rift), We Are Friends! (got acquainted with an alien lifeform), Farpoint (discovered the Human Outpost), Why So Molecular? (restored power to the Theta Splice device), Essentia Emendare (finished the expedition team's project), and then a choice between Dawn of Tomorrow (secured Rift Zero) and Tomorrow May Never Come (closed Rift Zero).
That is the shape of the finale without the staging: you leave the facility, meet something, find human presence on the other side, repair a device, finish the team's work, and decide what happens to Rift Zero. Two options, one achievement each, one run each.
Series order
| # | Game | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | We Were Here | the original |
| 2 | We Were Here Too | second entry |
| 3 | We Were Here Together | third entry |
| 4 | We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip | bite-sized entry for newcomers |
| 5 | We Were Here Forever | previous full campaign, ~10–12 hours |
| 6 | We Were Here Tomorrow | ~15 hours, standalone |
The developer's position is unambiguous: every game is a standalone online co-op adventure, the stories are connected, and you do not need to play them in order. Tomorrow is the largest at around fifteen hours.
Sector pages stay mechanics-first: they describe objectives, checkpoints, tools and failure modes, and leave the ending's staging alone.
Next: the walkthrough hub, or price and PC requirements if you have not bought it yet.
