Somerville

Outbursts of light and colour and shape, simple enough that they have the potential to become iconic. [Issue#379, p.104]

Somerville is a prime example of how great ideas and great creativity can be overwhelmed by technical and design problems. But it still promises a good and different gaming experience.

Somerville feels like a slightly more grounded successor to suspenseful platformers like Limbo and Inside, though controlling an actual adult here is a welcome change of pace.

Ultimately it's the setting, art direction, and non-verbal cinematic storytelling where Somerville excels. But even here there are long lulls and a few sections that begin to feel bland. Like when you’re in a cave system trying to avoid attention in a way that feels like a homage to Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. And outside of the emotional notes touched upon when it comes to trying to reach your family in an oppressive situation, the ending and final act are too obtuse and abstract to make any sort of lasting impact. Somerville is a visually impressive, relatively short cinematic adventure held back by its ambition.

A remarkable science fiction adventure that shines more for its tone, its context and its stimulating ending, than for the story of its characters. Despite this, it has narrative maneuvers that raise the interest in its text, and with a powerful staging that takes advantage of both its aesthetics and its fixed cameras. A concise and direct videogame that succeeds in almost everything it tries, and manages to leave an interesting aftertaste.

Somerville follows its own unique path within the puzzle-adventure genre. That path isn’t always a smooth one, with camera annoyances and physics wonkiness occasionally serving as a pebble in your shoe while solving its series of pleasantly challenging puzzles, and the story is more strange for the sake of being strange than it is thought-provoking. But thanks to its strong visual storytelling techniques and the way the opening minutes inspire an irresistible desire to find out what happened to this man and whether or not he’ll ever find his family, Somerville is nevertheless a very good tour through an exceptionally bleak scenario – all of which is successfully conveyed without a single line of dialogue.

Somerville isn't always the most enjoyable game to play, then. Its puzzles aren't anything special, and they're hampered by clunky controls. But what is special is Somerville's narrative and art design. The score, too, is excellent: we just wish there was more of it - too many scenes are simply too quiet. Even if we weren't enamoured with the ending, Somerville's story is worth experiencing. It's just a shame the gameplay is a little disappointing in comparison.

It’s hard to recommend Somerville purely on the basis of what loosely-tied and ultimately lacking material its narrative provides. A story, so to speak, devoid of a satisfying conclusion (not least if you’re going for all possible endings) wherein the vague explanation throughout doesn’t always work in its favor. Having said that, the same hands-off approach to its puzzle design does provide more than enough positives to render the game an enjoyable-enough trek.

Somerville is a sci-fi adventure that, beyond its fantastic art design, doesn’t do anything remarkable.

Somerville is very pretty, the gameplay is decent, but the content is unfortunately not gripping enough for an adventure.

While not reaching the expressive heights of Limbo or Inside, Somerville is placed in the wake of Playdead's videogame experiments. Jumpship's first work offers intriguing suggestions on the artistic and thematic front, but fails to translate the amount of stimuli proposed into a truly concrete narrative message. An unsettled contrast between level design, direction and game mechanics is unfortunately the background to the entire experience, which thus fails to fully express its potential. With a total duration of about 4-6 hours and several endings - all equally hermetic - to be gutted, Somerville could still conquer fans of the reference genre, even without representing one of the best exponents.

It was a bold move for the devs to try and move this traditionally 2D style of game into this hybrid 3D space, but I can’t help but feel that Jumpship would have been better off leaving it in 2D, because that extra dimension ends up just weighing the game down. It’s weirdly apt that right at the end of the game, when I’d got two different endings but was trying to unlock what I’d imagine was the ‘good’ ending, I experienced a massive bug that for a moment seemed like a creative decision, as I fell through the world, was reunited with my family on a grey platform in some empty void, then jumped off again to go into an infinite fall. In the end, Somerville’s admirable artistic vision and technical issues merged into one, poignantly showing that these two aspects of a game can’t ultimately be separated.

Somerville begins with a promise and ends… It ends wherever you end it, for not all players will endure its 6-8 hours-long run. It is a far cry from the previous „Playdead“ experiences, yet it still holds enough charm to be recommended to fans of this unique genre.

A nice adventure for one playthrough with zero replayability and a host of technical problems, which is quite baffling for a linear 4-hour game.

Unlike Limbo and Inside, Somerville looks like an experimental and unfinished project with a confused story and many gameplay hiccups.

Jumpship aims to create a sci-fi cinematic adventure that may surpass Limbo and Inside, but fails in its intent. The raw perfection of the camera is not enough to make an unforgettable adventure, and Somerville remains affected by technical flaws enhanced by the stark contrast with the utmost care Jumpship put in the study of the framing. Jumpship has proven it has all it takes to concoct a high value art direction: we hope that in the future the developers of Somerville may reach the intimate heart of things, letting the players discover the essence of an authentic and compelling drama.

Somerville provides an interesting attempt to create a "new", sci-fi, Inside, but it fails in its implementation and in the abstract idea of its story.

Somerville takes inspiration from 2 great modern classics, Limbo and Inside, however, it falls short to offer a deep contemplative experience. Despite some technical difficulties, it offers great value as a visually compelling puzzle adventure.

A nice, but by no means particularly memorable experience.

Somerville shows a ton of promise in its dramatic opening sequence, but sadly becomes a bit of a slog after a while. The game definitely has its moments, like some beautiful vistas, neat puzzles and a few pulse-pounding chaces, but the uneven pacing, wonky controls and unsatisfying conclusion make it really hard to enjoy sometimes.

Somerville is a quite troubled game. Its biggest flaw though is how often we spent more time trying to figure what the developer had in mind for the riddles, and less time with trying to solve the actual riddle.