Somerville Reviews
Somerville is a bleak, threatening and intimidating world to survive as you struggle to save your family. Its mix of surprisingly in-depth gameplay puzzling, beautiful art direction and genuinely heartfelt narrative glimpses of hope help it overcome what could have been burgeoning control and technical issues. You’ll struggle with more than just the invaders on occasion, but you’ll persevere willingly to take in more of this utterly compelling world.
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.
In truth, I’m not the biggest thinker when it comes to media. I watch a film, read a book, play a game, and take what’s happened at face value. If meaning is hidden behind a 10k-post Reddit thread, then, well, maybe it wasn’t conveyed well enough. Somerville doesn’t have this problem. It’s affecting in all the right ways, and a game I really can’t recommend strongly enough.
Somerville has ties to modern legends Limbo and Inside, but it’s equally reminiscent of another Hall of Famer: Out of This World. The end result is a unique physics-based puzzle adventure that isn’t quite on the level of the games that inspired it, but is nevertheless an extraterrestrial nightmare worth exploring.
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.
Jumpship's debut is a fantastic sci-fi tale with an intense atmosphere and wonderfully touching narrative, even if there are a few puzzle and movement frustrations.
Unlike Limbo and Inside, Somerville looks like an experimental and unfinished project with a confused story and many gameplay hiccups.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Jumpship's debut shows admirable taste and intelligence, even if it doesn't always manage to hold interest with the same ease.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
An escape from alien invasion, with beautiful art direction.
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.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Somerville is a flawed game and doesn't execute all of its ideas perfectly, but from its captivating story to some of its striking imagery, there's plenty still to like in this brief adventure.
Somerville is a beautiful and smart environmental puzzler filled with great ideas and a story that grips you from start to finish.
Somerville immerses you in a gripping adventure in the midst of an alien invasion. It will bring immersive atmosphere, well thought out puzzle elements, gorgeous visuals but also some frustration.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Somerville is a true "short and sweet" gaming experience that really throws a spanner into traditional storytelling and gaming.
Somerville is one of the most unique indie experiences of 2022. If you're fan of Playdead games or the Little Nightmares series, then Somerville is able to make you fall in love with it from the very first scene. As the very first game from Jumpship studio, it's a great title that's only hampered by some control issues. I strongly recommend it.
Review in Arabic | 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
Jumpship's wordless debut comes uniquely structured, but neither the story nor the gameplay do enough to help it carry the torch it's been passed.
Another special adventure emerges from a fragment of the creators of LIMBO and Inside, which with well-known forms intends to chart its own path as well. Somerville proposes family closeness and a great opening in its history and ties. An adventure of survival and discovery, expanded by the layer that adds manipulating extrasolar energies to solve its many situations and achieve something more personal and with its differential touch.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
“Somerville” reminded me of the qualities that I cherish in adventure games, particularly their ability to plunge one into the unexpected. I appreciated how its mechanics sidestep the usual weaponry that goes along with science-fiction games. (A gun-toting, super-soldier shows up at one point, but things don’t end well for them.) “Somerville” effortlessly pulled me in from moment to moment because I was eager to discover the next audiovisual flourish around the corner. There is a sequence toward the end where the man revisits places that is particularly captivating for the way in which it makes the familiar strange. That said, I was a little disappointed with the final scene in the game, which struck me as an overly familiar allusion to the ending of Tarkovsky’s film “Solaris.” But that aside, “Somerville” is the best adventure game I’ve played since “Little Nightmares 2.”