Somerville Reviews
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 left me with many more questions than answers, but the journey was well worth it in the end. Taking around 5-6 hours to complete, this puzzle adventure game revels in obscurity and almost completely forgoes dialogue, text and traditional HUD elements. The whole game is a tonne of fun to play and doesn’t hold your hand at all, making the tricky brain teasers mighty satisfying to conquer.
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 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 one of the year’s biggest surprises, and I’m still shocked to see it fly under the radar. Its portrayal of an alien invasion raging across the British countryside hit close to home, while the story of a father searching for his family and being tied up in a dilemma so much bigger than he ever imagined is both nothing like I expected and everything I wanted. I can’t wait to see players far smarter than I piece its most devious puzzles together, since there are still so many questions waiting to be answered.
Somerville is a beautiful and smart environmental puzzler filled with great ideas and a story that grips you from start to finish.
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.
Jumpship tries its best to evoke Playdead's aura with Somerville and even if thematically there are some great ideas with a good art direction but the jump from 2D to 3D doesn't feel as polished as you think. The story needed some more time in game to develop properly or another focus, kind of dimishes the impact of the endings rendering them a little unearned.
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.”
Mechanically simple but visually engrossing, Somerville offers an interesting, if not particularly deep, sci-fi adventure.
I suppose, then, that Somerville is the most welcoming of the three games, starting with the familiar, and riding the slow, exponential line upward into the bizarre. Wise choice. For all the craft required to make a clear, playable movie, nothing beats the otherworldly weirdness of video games.
An escape from alien invasion, with beautiful art direction.
Somerville isn’t perfect and does struggle to get some things right with its physics, puzzles, and interaction, but this is still one of the best-paced games I’ve played this year, with a story to match. With stunning visual effects, Somerville just oozes atmosphere and stands among the most interesting, engaging sci-fi epics in recent memory.