Somerville Reviews
Although Somerville has some standout features, gorgeously peaceful environments, and atmospheric, silent storytelling, they're somewhat dulled by its terrible controls, awful performance, and lack of exposition. Being restricted to walking pace and the path forward often unclear, you frequently end up walking into invisible barriers. There are huge drops in frame rate throughout, especially when loading new areas, and the lack of names and backstories for the family you're playing leaves you frustrated with little to no attachment to them and their eventual outcomes. If you’re looking for a short, touching title to tide you over until the next big release, this may be worth a look, but with all its issues, it's better off left alone in the dark.
A promising debut for Jumpship, with a perfect Game Pass title that can easily be finished in one evening but that would have deserved some extra polish. I want to believe.
Review in Italian | Read full review
So yeah… Somerville kind of sucks. The best parts of the game are when it focuses on the alien invasion aspect. The worst parts are everything else. Honestly, skip this game. It actually makes me worried for what Playdead has coming next because they have said they want to do more than just 2D games too and if they play anything like Somerville I’ll probably skip it.
Somerville is a near-perfect adventure game themed around an alien apocalypse, with fantastic puzzles and exploration. Its few missteps do little to detract from the overall experience.
Somerville is an exceptional project with huge missed potential, reason being the overall weak technical state. The game is just raw and would greatly benefit from at least another six month of dev time.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Gorgeous, creative, and tense, Somerville can make for a fairly gripping adventure, but difficulty seeing what you're doing, a fair amount of frustration, and an underwhelming conclusion make the experience less than it could have been.
Overall, Somerville has a fantastic and intriguing world that’s begging to be explored from the off. Wonderful art and sound design compounded with excellent character animations really bring this narrative adventure to life, but a smattering of bugs, lacklustre puzzle elements, and an ambiguous story that left me feeling unrewarded after posing so many initial questions, really hampered the experience.
Somerville does at least stick the landing with a third act that largely pushes the puzzles to the side in favor of an alien mind game that plays with one’s perception of what came before, and some surprisingly effective emotional payoff in the multiple endings. These moments represent the game at its best: scary, strange, wondrous, and enthralling. Thankfully, there are just enough of those riveting moments to forgive the ones where Somerville feels more than a little rote.
With his particular vision of The War of the Worlds, Somerville proposes a precious cinematic adventure focused on narration.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
While not reaching the expressive heights of Limbo or Inside, Somerville is in the wake of Playdead's videogame experiments.
Review in Italian | Read full review
When the journey was over, with the credits rolling, I found myself left deep in thought, reflecting on what I had just seen unfold and the meaning of the journey I had embarked on. Quite whether this grand conclusion actually presents more questions than it does answers, I’m still not sure. In any case, I do think Somerville at least succeeds in delivering that punchy, thought-provoking crescendo and conclusion it was always building towards. I just wish it hadn’t been such a slog to get there.
Some clever puzzles, great visuals, and a solid story help carry Somerville through its occasional rough spots.
In Somerville's attempt to differentiate from Limbo and Inside, player's are left with a moody, wordless story lacking technical finesse and head-scratching puzzles that define the genre's best.
Though getting through it was occasionally bumpy, I only wish I'd been able to get more of it once it really got going. And had Somerville maintained its human element front and center, I think I would've loved the way the story ended more than I ultimately did. As it stands though, Somerville is a notable debut by Patti's new studio, it just has some of the wrinkles of one too.
Somerville relies on its fantastic animations and settings to tell a story of a father trying to reunite with his family. But without important story fundamentals such as exposition, you have no idea what is going on. Coupled with the fact that the adventure consists of simply solving puzzles while walking around, it is hard to immerse yourself in the story or even care about what will happen. Solving puzzles can also be difficult because you are expected to fumble around and discover what can be interacted with. There's no guidance or assistance, which leads to frustration when you have no idea what to do next. There's a good attempt at telling a story here, but it's difficult to find yourself wanting to reach the end.
It feels like cheating to call Somerville a debut indie title when its creator's individual pedigree is so strong, but it's a tremendous spiritual successor to both Limbo and Inside. It takes an ordinary setting, quickly removes all normalcy, and takes the player on a fleeting sci-fi thrill ride that makes use of every second of your attention that it has.
Somerville does for Inside for what Inside did for Limbo. While the means of gameplay has evolved into a 3D realm, it’s more an emphasis on an actual narrative that sets it apart.
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.