Source basis: this guide is synthesized and rewritten from four independent walkthroughs — the Steam Community pictorial guide, the sirusgaming.com 8-page solution set, the showgamer.com text guide, and the Neoseeker outline — which agree on the chapter chain and the few fixed answers. Official details are from Wikipedia and the Steam store page. We Were Here Forever is a big, image-driven game: many puzzles are randomized per session or solved purely by describing what you see, so this guide gives you the reliable method for those and only prints a code where that code is genuinely the same in every game. Nothing here is invented.
What is We Were Here Forever?
We Were Here Forever is the fourth game in Total Mayhem Games' co-op puzzle series (after We Were Here, Too, and Together). It launched on May 10, 2022 on PC, came to PlayStation and Xbox in January 2023, and unlike the original it is a paid game (around $17.99, often on sale). It is the longest and most elaborate entry by far — expect roughly 8 to 11 hours for a single run.
You and a friend play two prisoners trapped inside Castle Rock, near the cursed village of Rockbury, toyed with by a sinister Jester. As always, the whole game is built on a walkie-talkie: you are split into separate spaces, you cannot see each other, and every puzzle is solved by describing what you see and trusting what you hear. It is strictly two-player online co-op — no solo mode, no split-screen.
This guide walks the whole game in order: six chapters, every major puzzle, the answers that are actually fixed, and an honest heads-up wherever a puzzle is randomized so you don't waste time hunting for a code that doesn't exist.
How the game works (read this first)
- You are split, every puzzle. There are no fixed “Explorer/Librarian” roles this time — both of you wear the same jester garb and you swap who-sees-what constantly. One player is always at the puzzle; the other is looking up or operating the matching clue somewhere else.
- Hold to talk, and agree on words first. Only one person transmits at a time. Before each puzzle, agree on names for the colors, shapes, and symbols you'll be describing — “the spiky one,” “top-left,” “a five-point crown” — so you're not inventing vocabulary under a timer.
- Most puzzles have no code — on purpose. Compared to the older games, Forever leans hard on spatial and randomized puzzles. Slot symbols, trial tiles, the cemetery dig spot, and the final lever order change between playthroughs, and many solutions are read straight off what's in front of you. For those, the reliable answer is the method, which we give. Only a small set of answers (the hymn, the boiler, the bridge rhythm, the grave list) are the same in every game — those are in the table below.
- Plan on two playthroughs. The game has 39 achievements and every puzzle is asymmetric, so seeing both sides — and both endings — means playing it twice with roles swapped. That's normal and expected.
Full walkthrough video
Quick-reference: the answers that are actually fixed
These are the solutions that are the same in every game, cross-checked across the guides. Bookmark this table; everything else in the game is solved by the method described in each chapter.
| Puzzle | Fixed answer |
|---|---|
| Ch.2 — The Hymn (organ), 6 phrases in order | G A C B → G F C B → G C C D → G F C C → C F G C → E F G A |
| Ch.1 — Catacombs boiler buttons (after turning the key) | Top-right → bottom-left → top-left |
| Ch.1 — Slide Dials cage (direction by dot count) | 3 = lower-left, 4 = right, 5 = lower-right, 6 = up |
| Rockbury — rotating bridge button rhythm | 3 → 3 → 2 → 1 presses |
| Graveyard — the five graves to dig | Truden, Reynwi, Gertruid, Ysebrant + the 1253–1331 grave (see chapter) |
| Foundry — The Deep, the 4 replies (meanings) | Hello → Explorers → Yes → Escape |
Puzzles deliberately left off this table — the cell symbols, the dial/disc room code, the trial tiles, the cemetery dig spot, the lens and pipe layouts, the cooking puzzle, and the finale lever order — are randomized or image-only, so they have no universal code. The chapters below tell you exactly what to do for each.
Chapter 1 — The Keep
The opening, and the longest chapter. It's linear, so just work through it in order.
- The prison cells. You wake in separate cells. Each of you sees half of three small symbol locks (“we are the sum of our parts”). Read your symbols left to right, your partner reads theirs, and you enter the combined order. Read carefully — the symbols are similar on purpose.
- The Deep Dungeons (chasm). A ravine splits you, with pulley carts between. Trade the shaped, colored keys across the pulley — the green round key and the blue cross key go to whoever's door needs them. It's a pass-it-back logic puzzle, not a code.
- Knob Around. Two mirrored panels of sliding knobs (a jester hat, crowns, a priest hat, a flask). It's a sliding-tile puzzle: a knob sitting in a slot blocks others from passing, so you clear a path by moving the right piece out of the way first. This one is much easier to follow on the video than as a list of moves.
- Shell Locked. One of you has a button panel with a timer; the other has wheels and plates. The panel shows a symbol; the partner finds the matching plate, reads the symbol on the wheel above it, and the button player presses it — four times, against the clock. The symbols vary between games, so this is pure communication.
- The Catacombs boiler. A fixed one: turn the key by the boiler, then press the buttons top-right, bottom-left, top-left. Purple smoke means you got it. Then one player pulls the cauldron lever while the other works the red-button lever together to get the flywheel and gas going.
- The Dial / Disc Room. A big dial with three rings — circles, squares, pentagons — and three books, one mapping to each ring. Each book gives a number (a page) for its ring. Heads-up: guides disagree on the exact digits here, which means the reading depends on your layout, so don't trust a single hard-coded number — match each book to its ring and read the page off your own game (watch the video segment if you get stuck).
- The Trial Arena. One player stands in a pit with a metal ball; the other reads a panel and calls out the safe tiles. There are four trials, two of them timed, and the last trial's unsafe tiles change after every step — so there's no fixed path, just clear callouts and a steady pace.
- Sewers, Caves, and the Jester's realm. Linear stretches (take the left path at the one fork) leading into the Jester's card-suit portal rooms and dimension-swap chambers, where rotating a symbol in one dimension changes the other. These are long spatial sequences — the video walks them cleanly if you get turned around.
Chapter 2 — The Chapel
Shorter, mostly fixed puzzles, and it ends by opening the hub that lets you pick your next three chapters in any order.
- Headless Dolls (the owl). An owl statue poses riddles; you answer by placing puppet heads on the right courtyard scenes. The logic is fixed: the King and Jester heads go on the betrayer/whisperer scene; each craftsman — Clockmaker, Mason, Glassblower, Bronze-heater — goes on the scene showing their trade; the two princesses (Katherine and Emilia) go on theirs. Match the person to what the riddle describes.
- Holy Mass (the pews). Seat the dolls so that men and women never share a bench and resistance members never sit directly in front of or behind each other. It's a seating logic puzzle — one player moves the dolls, the other reads those rules from the mezzanine.
- Revealing the Resistance. Pick out the four resistance members from the portraits — the clockmaker, the woman with the hair bun, the balding man with a monocle, and the white-haired man with a monocle.
- The Hymn. The big one, and the most-searched answer in the game. One player orders the hymn sheets by date; the other plays the organ. The resolved order of six four-note phrases is:
- G A C B
- G F C B
- G C C D
- G F C C
- C F G C
- E F G A
A green light confirms each correct phrase; then both players pull the two organ-top levers together to reveal the astrolabe and the three-location hub.
Chapters 3–5 — the three fragments (any order)
From the Chapel you can tackle the Graveyard, Rockbury, and the Foundry in whatever order you like. Each ends in a machine fragment you carry back and install in the chapel astrolabe; you need all three before the finale.
The Graveyard (Royal Cemetery) — fragment 1
- The token (obol) exchange. Slide the emblems between two rows so the top and bottom match the linking tablet (shield–sword–clock–crown on one side, crown–chain–book–flask on the other). It's a logic puzzle on a fixed starting layout — work the matches one pair at a time; the full step-by-step is in the video if you stall.
- Grave robbing — the five graves. One player breaks graves with a pickaxe and passes the keys through the well; the other applies them to the four-armed door. Dig only these five (the names and dates are identical in every game):
- Truden — 1256–1339 (clockmaker)
- Reynwi — 1261–1339 (glassblower)
- Gertruid — 1232–1310 (mason)
- Ysebrant — 1207–1285 (bronze-heater)
- the 1253–1331 grave (bronze-heater)
Breaking three wrong graves curses your partner (their vision blurs until they pass out), so be sure before you swing.
- X marks the spot (randomized). One player finds an X on a map and digs up a chest showing a number; the other breaks the matching niche. To read the number, count circles as 10 and lines as 1 (so “one circle, four lines” = 14). The X location and the number are different every game — just read yours and relay it.
- Fit the gears together to claim fragment 1 and carry it back to the chapel.
Rockbury (the Ruins) — fragment 2
- Bridges and the rotating bridge. You traverse zip-lines, cranes, and a turntable bridge to reach each other. For the rotating bridge, the button-press rhythm around your partner's crossings is fixed: 3 presses, then 3, then 2, then 1.
- The Reflections (lenses). One player arranges mirrors and picture-lenses in a caged room to route a light beam so it projects the target image; the other rotates them from above. The upper-left lens is fixed and acts as your reference; rotate the others (often 180°) until the shadows line up. There is no single required order — it's about getting the light to land right — so describe the beam and adjust together.
- That earns fragment 2 for the chapel.
The Foundry (the Nautilus & the Deep) — fragment 3
- The Sunken Mines (diving). One player wears the diving helmet and explores underwater — keep running (hold Shift) to conserve oxygen — while the other rotates pipes to refill air at the landmark valves (anchor, jellyfish, steering-wheel). Navigate by the statue landmarks and call your air level often.
- The grid pipes. Both of you lay a limited supply of lettered pipes to connect colored inputs to outputs across shared grids, without crossing lines. These are fixed but spatial — lay them one connection at a time; the video shows a clean solution.
- The Deep (the Guardian). A sea creature asks four questions in an unknown tongue; one player translates with a book while the other enters the two-symbol replies (right symbol first, then left). The four answers, in order, mean: “Hello,” “Explorers,” “Yes,” “Escape.”
- The Assembly (timed cooking). A timed crafting puzzle: process ingredients on the conveyors and pour them into the astrolabe mold before the clock runs out. There is no single fixed recipe — guides describe it differently — but the reliable approach is to place the left conveyor far from the melting pot and the right conveyor close to it, dispense and grind your solids first, process the liquids last, then pull both center levers together. Watch the video segment to see the rhythm. That completes fragment 3.
Chapter 6 — The Finale
With all three fragments installed, the endgame is a single big light-beam puzzle in the tower.
- Redirect the beam. Rotate the spheres and clear the fallen platforms so the moonlight beam travels toward the gate. Some steps are scripted — at one point a player falls through and has to be helped back up before the levers respond, so stay in contact.
- The final lever station. Both players face three levers and an indicator display, and must pull six levers total in the order shown, within the timer. Important: the order regenerates every time the timer cycles, so there is no code to memorize — each of you reads your half of the indicator and calls it out fast.
- When the beam reaches the gate, a cutscene plays, the mechanism explodes, and both of you are thrown into the sea.
The endings — only one of you stays afloat
In the water, you both swim to a single floating board. One player climbs on; the other asks for help. If the player on the board helps the other up, the helper is thrown back into the sea and the roles reverse — and the second player can then help in turn, or refuse.
Only one of you can stay on the board; the other sinks. It's a betray-or-sacrifice choice, and it gives the two players different ending achievements. There are effectively two symmetric endings — whichever of you survives. To see both (and to grab the other side of every asymmetric puzzle), replay with your roles swapped. It's a long game, but the second run moves much faster once you both know the chapters.
Frequently asked questions
How long is We Were Here Forever?
About 8 to 11 hours for one playthrough, and longer if a puzzle stumps you (players report up to 18). It's the biggest game in the series. Because every puzzle is two-sided, expect to play it twice with swapped roles for full completion.
Is We Were Here Forever free like the first game?
No. Only the original We Were Here is free. Forever is a paid game (around $17.99, frequently discounted) on Steam, Epic, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Can I play it solo?
No. It's strictly two-player online co-op — no single-player and no split-screen. You need a partner and a way to talk (the in-game walkie-talkie or any voice chat). It does support crossplay across platforms.
What is the organ / hymn code in Chapter 2?
Play the six phrases in this order: G A C B, G F C B, G C C D, G F C C, C F G C, E F G A, then both players pull the organ-top levers together. It's the same in every game.
Why don't many puzzles have a fixed code?
Because Forever randomizes a lot — the slot symbols, the trial tiles, the cemetery dig spot, and the final lever order all change between games — and many other puzzles are spatial, solved by describing what you see rather than entering a string. For those, the reliable answer is the method, which each chapter above gives you. Only the hymn, the boiler, the bridge rhythm, the slide-dial directions, the grave list, and the Deep's four replies are genuinely fixed.
Which graves do I dig in the cemetery?
Only these five: Truden (1256–1339), Reynwi (1261–1339), Gertruid (1232–1310), Ysebrant (1207–1285), and the 1253–1331 grave. Breaking three wrong graves curses your partner's vision, so dig carefully.
How many endings are there?
Two, decided at the floating board at the very end: only one player can stay afloat, so it comes down to who is saved and who sinks. Each ending grants a different achievement; replay with swapped roles to see both.
Want a completionist run to follow along with? Here's a 100% achievement walkthrough on YouTube. And you can find the game on its official Steam page. New to the series? Our We Were Here (original) walkthrough covers the free first game.