Shaun Munro reviews Somerville…
Somerville is the debut title from new dev outfit Jumpship, formed by Dino Patti, who previously co-founded Playdead, the studio behind beloved indie platformers Limbo and Inside.
As such there’s been a tremendous, probably unfair weight of expectation placed upon this game ever since it was first unveiled back in 2017. But even so, for Jumpship’s debut title to be so frustratingly unpolished out of the gate ensures Somerville is one of the year’s grandest gaming disappointments.
This sci-fi adventure game unfolds in the midst of an alien invasion on Earth, as a father desperately attempts to get his wife, infant son, and dog to safety in the midst of growing danger. Like Limbo and Inside, the narrative unfolds without any spoken words or insightful flavour-text, with the player instead encouraged to glean context from cues littered across the various apocalyptic environments you’ll saunter through during the three-to-four-hour adventure.
As with its spiritual predecessors, the focal gameplay is agreeably basic, typically comprised of relatively rudimentary platforming, traversal, puzzle-solving, and stealth. The big rub, though, is that the father protagonist is “gifted” alien powers early in the story, granting him the ability to melt a mysterious alien substance covering large swaths of the Earth and in turn keep moving forward. Later he gains an additional power on his right arm, allowing him to solidify said melted material, and so much of the latter half’s puzzle elements come down to manipulating matter.
You’re meanwhile generally unable to directly engage with your otherworldly aggressors, and must instead use stealth to sneak past gigantic alien tractor beams and skirt smaller alien creatures.
In theory these mechanical elements are all fine enough, yet there’s a disappointing lack of evolution over the course of the game, beyond gaining the aforementioned second power. An overlong mid-game section set inside a labyrinthine cave system feels largely like a tech demo-y showcase for the melt/solidify dichotomy yet only occasionally does something truly inspired with it. And even when the game changes up its setting in the closing chapter, it ends up leaning back on rote, over-familiar gameplay ideas.
Right from its opening sequence, in which we briefly control the family’s young son, it’s clear that we’re not in for the most robust title in terms of even basic controls, movement, and problem-solving. The clunkiness of interacting with the 3D environment, where it’s not always immediately clear what the game is asking of you – despite the presence of orange colour-coded objects – ensures progression often feels like an obtuse game of luck. The trigger points to interact with objects are typically way too finnicky and precise.
Platforming is also rather a chore at times, as the game is infuriatingly selective about which platforms you’re actually able to step on without enough visual signposting to make this adequately clear. As a result you’ll probably end up falling to your death numerous times in ways that’ll feel in no way your fault, or worse, get glitched in the environment and have to restart from the last checkpoint (which, thankfully, are generous).
Tech issues abound elsewhere; you’ll likely regularly clip through or get snagged on objects, and even if not, you’ll frequently fight a camera that seems hell-bent on betraying you. The intention of the camera is spotty at best, as it’ll often point you towards an area that offers nothing, and then when you do find the path forward, the perspective will randomly disappear into a wall and prevent you from seeing where the hell you’re going.
Generally speaking the overall difficulty is mild, though there are a number of irritating fail states during chase and stealth sequences which will require tiresome repetition of the same beat numerous times for many players. Again, it comes down to the game not always giving you a clear idea of what you’re supposed to do, ensuring advancement can too often feel like an exercise in half-baked trial-and-error.
Perhaps the single most maddening aspect of the game, however, is the pacing; specifically, the decision to have the player character spend the vast majority of the game walking at an absolute snail’s pace. There’s no run button in Somerville and you’re only able to do a light jog if the game wants you to during select sequences, forcing you into a sluggish dawdle for the most part. Right from the opening invasion sequence, there’s a deeply silly disconnect between the urgent scenario unfolding and the father’s utterly unfussed, strolling canter.
While a cynical critic might suggest this decision was made to pad the length of a game that’s already rather on the short side, it ends up making the game’s puzzles feel far more like busy-work than necessary. If you need to walk across a room to inspect something and it turns out to be nothing useful, you’ve probably just wasted a minute or two due to the wading-through-treacle walking speed. The ultra-slow movement also heavily discourages players to go off-piste and explore the world at all.
For such a short game to be so mechanically repetitive and rely so much on a slow pace is deeply frustrating; when people refer to walking sims in a derogatory tone, this is exactly the sort of thing they’re talking about. That’s to say nothing of a story many will find too elliptical for its own good, no matter that it liberally borrows from a bevy of cinematic brethren, ranging from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to A Quiet Place, and others that can’t be revealed for spoiler reasons.
By Somerville‘s end I had little idea of the particulars I’d just experienced; of the game’s multiple endings, I apparently saw an especially abrupt one, yet it didn’t leave me with much desire to use the chapter select function and test out the other endings on offer. Vague storytelling need not be a bad thing, but revealingly I was very much ready for the game to be over long before its short play-time came to an end.
Better games have wordlessly wrought tremendous emotion through environmental storytelling, yet despite revolving around a father fighting to protect his family unit, Somerville feels bizarrely neutered. When separated from the family, I didn’t feel much at all, and even when the dog wandered off, my concern was limited due to the lack of character shading in even the most implicit, elemental terms.
The game fares much better as a purely audio-visual experience, at least. Art director Georgi Someonov deserves a world of credit for making the game’s palette pop in almost every moment, ranging from the muted tones of the earthy overworld to the more brightly colour-coded alien environments, all of it captured in an ultra-wide 21:9 ratio.
The robust visuals are backed by a gorgeous – if sparingly deployed – sweeping score from Dominque Charpentier and Matteo Cerquone, and crunchy sound design which will make the most of anyone’s sound setup, especially whenever the aliens show up. The sound of the father coughing repeatedly during a lengthy mid-game sequence did, however, prove mildly irksome after a few minutes.
It does have to be said that the game’s overall technical performance is incredibly disappointing. Even on a decent desktop PC, micro-judder is a regular occurrence during play, especially when experimenting with the alien abilities. Steam Deck players get it much worse, though, as during my half-hour play-test the frame-rate largely ranged from 15-20fps, as will likely render it close to unplayable for all but the most persistent. Plus, the boxy aspect ratio ensures black bars will take up a major portion of the Deck’s 7-inch screen.
It can’t be overstated that Jumpship’s association with Playdead has placed a lofty air of anticipation upon this game, yet given that the two studios are distinctly different entities in terms of wider personnel, it shouldn’t be surprising that Somerville isn’t as refined as the prior games Patti has produced.
Even so, it’s tough to defend the shockingly rough gameplay, enough that one couldn’t recommend buying this for its launch RRP. But as a few passable hours on Xbox Game Pass for a nominal fee, it becomes a considerably less objectionable proposition.
Appealing art direction and excellent sound design do a lot of the heavy lifting in Somerville, but are undermined at almost every turn by frustratingly sloppy gameplay mechanics.
Pros:
+ Gorgeous art style.
+ Remarkable score and general sound design.
+ Intriguing world building and mystery.
+ Some clever puzzles.
+ It’s sensibly brief.
Cons:
– Jank-filled gameplay.
– Brutally slow movement speed.
– Opaque story will frustrate some.
– It surprisingly lacks emotional resonance.
– It can’t hold a candle to Limbo or Inside.
Rating: 5.5/10
Reviewed on PC (also available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S).
A retail copy was played for review.
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more video game rambling, or e-mail me here.
