Together in Between Review

Together in Between is a co-op puzzle game developed by new indie studio Vellichor Games and released on the 2nd of September. In it, you play as one of two characters — one of which can only interact with white objects and stand on white floors, and the other only black. As a fan of puzzle games, I was immediately intrigued by the idea and look of Together in Between.

Starting off, you are greeted with a basic tutorial that shows you the logic of some puzzles and how to interact with the world and your teammate. It’s a neat little sequence and not very complicated, so it does what it needs to do well. Once you get through it, you see a giant wizard guy telling you some things about how no one has managed to beat this yet, before then going off somewhere. The story is frankly not very interesting, and you can easily get through the entire title without knowing a thing about it.

Now, since it’s a puzzle game, Together in Between relies more on its gameplay than it does on any other aspect; so how is that gameplay? Well,… the idea behind it is solid, but not much more. Every player can see and interact with different things in the world, but both players are needed to solve all the puzzles. The problem is that the co-op aspect is really poorly made: there are some puzzles which are just “interact with these two objects at the same time”; instead of relying on your friend’s descriptions, you can just press a button to view their screen, and half of the puzzles are just showing your friend your screen and waiting for them to press the buttons they need according to what you’re looking at. There are some really great and fun challenges, such as at the beginning of the game: you have a giant chessboard and need to find a mate-in-three, with both you and your friend making the best moves for whatever colour you’re playing as. Unfortunately, these are very few and far between, so most of the time, you’d either just need to wait for your friend to press a bunch of buttons, or your friend would have to wait for you to press a bunch of buttons, without much thought.

A huge and unique thing about Together in Between is that it’s completely in black and white. It can be both very beautiful, seeing the contrast on items and places, but it can also get tiring easily. If you’re sensitive to bright light, there’s thankfully a setting to make things greyer; although I’ve found that playing as black is somehow more blinding because seeing things in complete blackness requires more effort. Another really, really annoying thing about the graphics is that players have no view models, so I can’t give directions to the other player on where to go unless they’re holding an item. I would have understood it, if it was impossible to see the other player all the time — it adds a layer of difficulty. But being able to see the held item where my friend is located but not my friend is just a mild annoyance, as you get an item on the first few minutes of playing.

There are sound effects in the game, and they are genuinely pretty good. It’s not revolutionary audio design, but I can’t recall anything particularly good or anything particularly bad about it. Similarly, the music in Together in Between is pretty good, without anything big to note about it — I never once stopped to think about the tracks, whether negatively or positively.

Overall, Together in Between is not a particularly good title, and I can’t say I’d recommend it. While it’s an interesting idea for a game and has some positive aspects, most of the gameplay amounts to frustrating repetition and there is not a lot of real co-op that requires both players to put their heads together and try to think about a solution.