[News] Somerville review

[FazzNoth]

Sci-fi narrative adventure game Somerville launches for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC today, and also drops straight into Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. Here are our thoughts on Jumpship's debut title.

Somerville piles on the intrigue from the off. In an early scene reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s sci-fi flick Signs, we, as a young child whose parents have nodded off on the sofa, toddle around a dark living room while an ominous banging and shuffling emanates from outside the farmhouse. Captivated by the noise, we go in search of answers, clumsily making our way through the house before clambering up to the kitchen window, where the shuffling and chirping from an otherworldly creature continues. Somerville wants you to open this window and risk inviting whatever is skulking around outside into your home. The sound, visuals, and atmosphere here make for a tense and unnerving opening experience that tugs at your curiosity to keep you moving forward. This level of intrigue is continuous throughout the game, but ultimately, outside of some excellent visuals and wonderful sound design, Somerville falls short in several areas.

 

Developed by Jumpship, Somerville is a narrative adventure that boasts a producer credit from ex-Playdead CEO and co-founder Dino Patti. Comparisons were made early doors to Patti’s previous puzzle platformers, Inside and Limbo, but Somerville is a narrative adventure first and foremost. While there might be some shared DNA in terms of the lack of dialogue and combat, Jumpship’s debut game mainly focuses on narrative, which, for me, didn’t quite land.

Somerville follows the story of a family who has been caught up in the middle of an alien invasion. Aside from your brief time as the toddler, you play as the father who, after an accident that transfers a supernatural power into his right arm, is presumed dead, leaving the wife and toddler to flee. Sometime after that night, the father is awoken by the strange energy now coursing through his body, and along with his trusty canine companion, he sets out to find his wife and son. While it’s not the most novel opening to a game, it certainly had me asking questions: Where is my family? Who are these alien invaders? What are these vast other-worldly obelisks poking down from the sky like stalactites?

 

Stepping out into Somerville’s world, it quickly became clear just how much effort and painstaking detail Jumpship have put into crafting a convincing post-apocalyptic UK. The visuals and art style here are excellent, and it really feels as if an alien invasion has occurred in some rural part of the UK. The world is seemingly devoid of life aside from curious orb-like creatures who zip around hoovering up strange alien matter and the dangling obelisks that suddenly open up to cast a striking pink beam of light that tracks across the land to find and destroy anything left alive. In terms of atmosphere and world-building, Jumpship has done an excellent job here. A standout area is the abandoned Glastonbury-like festival, where the flapping of hundreds of empty tents and empty main stage create an eerie feeling. The excellent sound design also plays a huge part in making this world believable, and again, Jumpship has nailed it. Playing with headphones, the noise can get so immense and daunting that it’s really quite thrilling.

From a gameplay perspective, Somerville is simple. It’s mainly a case of following the route through each environment and completing the odd puzzle to get you into the next area. It’s a slow ride, with the character, at times, moving painfully slow to the point of annoyance. This is exaggerated when you come to certain areas that aren’t clear in where you’re supposed to go. Walking a long way off slowly into the distance only to find it’s the wrong direction and then slowly having to walk back because the area isn’t well signposted is a pain. The journey through each environment is broken up with some light puzzle solving, which revolves around the supernatural power you pick up. When combined with a light source, it allows you to form a beam that melts and dissolves (and later solidifies) alien debris and substances blocking your path. Things start off simple with a light attached to a cord that only stretches so far, but as the game progresses, the puzzles get a little more complex, if only slightly. One puzzle that I did particularly enjoy involved physics and solidifying some of the alien substance in a minecart to open a door, and while it did get the cogs whirring in the noggin for a bit, this and possibly one other were the only puzzles that challenged. Although these puzzles aren’t the toughest to figure out, they do at least break up the traversal, offering something a little different.

https://www.trueachievements.com/n51851/somerville-review