Somerville has all the trappings of a killer indie science fiction mystery. Gorgeous visuals, an engaging central mystery, some awe-inspiring animations, and some of the talent behind indie darlings Limbo and Inside. And it starts poised to deliver. You begin the game in an almost surreal representation of the American Dream; Dad, Mom, Child, and Dog asleep on the couch as the television plays whatever was next after their scheduled programming.
The tv wakes up the infant child, and your gameplay begins. As you waddle around the house, the care taken to put into animations is evident. Soon you take a tumble, and your perspective shifts to the Dad. Shortly after, the sky starts falling as some alien presence invades our world. It is entertaining; I only wish the rest of the game held up quite well during the remaining three and a half hours.
How Somerville Presents Itself
Somerville had me entranced in its mysterious Sci-fi story from its opening moments. A big reason for that is the visual style of the game. As the opening credits roll, you’re introduced to its beautiful, almost painted art style, which I think is easily one of Somerville’s greatest strengths. It’s almost like a moving painting, with abstract characters and art. Once you progress a little in the story, your character is granted an unidentified power that allows you to turn the alien remnant biomass into a liquid. This physics reaction is a sight to behold, and I sometimes wonder if some of Somerville’s shortcomings result from the amount of work that went into it.
As you gain control of your character and interact with its lovingly created world, the camera work and direction begin to shine. Every camera movement seems deliberate. The camera slowly creeps side to side, revealing foreground objects as it slips behind a wall as your character moves from area to area. It acts as if it were on a jib as it slowly swoops closely on specific actions. It all works to feel very cinematic.
Jumpship does an excellent job of adding contrast and color to their world, allowing certain things to shine. This is of the utmost importance because there is no dialogue or text in Somerville. Everything from its gameplay cues to its character emotion is visual. On the one hand, this works wonders, the animations convey emotion exceptionally well, and there are specific animations when a character moves or interacts with the world that looks super impressive. On the other hand, this also plays into Somerville’s downfall and severely takes me out of the experience. An early example is when the game wants you to grab your go bag before running out of your house while an alien invasion is happening, mind you. There is no dialogue or tool-tip to guide you to this; just the fact that the go bag has a yellow handle and your silent wife holding a quiet baby (we’ve heard the baby cry like 3 minutes earlier, mind you) is pointing into the kitchen.
Somerville’s Gameplay
Unlike Limbo & Inside, which took place on a strictly 2D plane, Somerville lets you explore its environments in all directions. This makes for great exploration and allows the excellent camera to shine as it slowly pushes into the action or creeps around foreground objects. It also allows for some clever puzzle-solving throughout, including some really fun physics-based puzzles that take full advantage of the central gameplay concept of Somerville.
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Early on in Somerville, you gain the ability to manipulate the alien matter that is littered over this post-invasion world. You do this by touching a light source with your “power,” any alien matter that the light source touches turns from a solid to a liquid. This can range from mundanely simple to creatively intricate. One early example is the act of touching a lamp that is hanging over alien matter, blocking your path and turning it into liquid, allowing you to wade through to your destination. A later example involves grabbing string lights and taking full advantage of your 3D plane as you wrap the lights around objects to achieve your goal.
Unfortunately, most of the time, lining up your character to interact with objects in the world proves wildly tricky. My character often would stand in front of levers clenching and unclenching their fists as I tried to get perfectly lined up for the action to take hold. The woes with gameplay don’t end there, either. Your character has some gorgeous animations, but often I found myself stuck in the environment or struggling to navigate precisely. Overall, the movement felt sluggish, and I thought I was fighting with the controller to get him to move where I needed him to.
The Story Of Somerville
Somerville tells quite an emotional story for most of its runtime. I was fully invested in navigating our voiceless protagonist to his lost wife and child as the world was succumbing to an alien invasion around him. I only wish that I cared as much about that alien invasion. As the story expanded and grew outside of your search for your family, I often got lost, confused, and less engaged. By the time the credits rolled, I didn’t have a clear picture of what the artists intended from the tale. This is unfortunate because for ⅔’s of the game, I truly enjoyed the environmental storytelling.
Performance Woes
Before I wrap up, I wanted to touch on performance. I played Somerville on a pretty high-end PC sporting an RTX 3080Ti. My performance was pretty rough for the majority of my playthrough. Frame rates were inconsistent, I had almost constant stuttering, and unless there is some meta thing going on, my credit/post-credit sequence for one ending (of multiple unlockable endings) was bugged.
I ended up dropping my resolution and quality down too far below what I should be pushing for a game of this nature to try to smooth things out. It was playable, as this isn’t a game where reflexes are often needed but it did detract from my overall enjoyment.
Final Thoughts on Somerville
Somerville was an extremely polarizing game for me. It was often a chore to control, and performance left lots to be desired. But the game was undeniably gorgeous, and most puzzles were fun, if not particularly challenging. I enjoyed what Jumpship did for most of the story; I wish it didn’t leave me with more questions than answers.
I hope we see more from this developer, as this was a solid first effort that can be refined into something truly remarkable in their subsequent actions.
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