Somerville Review – Struggling with the Third Dimension

Already in the menu you can see that although the development studio has a different name, the main authors are the same people who worked in the Playdead team on Limbo games and especially Inside. The minimalism that abounds in their titles can be seen at every turn, in graphics, sound design, storytelling… But the biggest difference between the aforementioned games and Somerville is the third dimension. Did this bet pay off?

• Platform: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S (Verified)
• Publication date: 11/15/2022
• Developer: Jump ship
• Genre: Logic adventure game
• Czech localization: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 10 GB
• Game time: 3-5 hours
• Price: 739 CZK (Xbox), 25 Euros (Steam), the game is available on the Game Pass subscription service.

I was really looking forward to Somerville because of Inside. I fell in love with the fluidity of movement and puzzle solving. The purity with which the developers delivered the game was unprecedented by the standards of an indie studio. I was expecting a similar presentation from Somerville.

While the stylization and overall visual impression remained, the other titles surprised me in the very first scene. Sharp movements, mixing of objects and poor orientation in the environment. It seems that the developers overdid it by expanding their game to the third dimension.

I hit about half the door on the first try.

Unfortunately, the problems Somerville discovers at the beginning persist throughout the play. It could be a banality, but at a time when moving around the environment itself is extremely inconvenient and even unpleasant, it is difficult to keep the impression by making the environment beautiful. I hit about half the door on the first try.

As his chief mechanic, Somerville represents light work. This can be exploited by players through mysterious abilities they acquire during the approximately four hour journey to break through or alternatively “petrify” strange alien structures. The idea is not bad, but everything is connected with everything. And what I described earlier is also reflected in the solution of puzzles.

Firstly, the environments are saturated with stimuli, and the places for interaction in the game are rather sparingly marked. More than once, the originally planned puzzle solution turns into turning over everything on the screen. Other times you have an open path and the lack of clarity in the environment betrays you. A hole in a wall or fence, located deeper in space, may be more subtle than it seems. Not to mention the usual passages, where the authors require players to hide in the shadows for sure. Precision isn’t helped by the controls or the ambiguity of where the shadow actually falls.

In order not only to criticize the game, I must acknowledge the previously mentioned audiovisual side. Although minimalism comes with certain sores, the impression of really beautiful scenes prevails. The sound design is also top notch, and I’m not afraid to call it the best the Jumpship debut has to offer. Although the music is played only a few times, it further enhances the atmosphere of the individual scenes.

In addition, from the very beginning, an interesting plot is outlined in the game. An alien attack, contact with a mysterious humanoid, and being sent on a journey to save a family is just the beginning. Around the middle of the game, things start to take a completely different turn, and in the last few chapters, the game (a bit like Inside, but many times more) turns into a completely surreal experience.

Just because something is interesting doesn’t mean it’s good.

While I’d like the ending to be satisfying and I’m proud of myself that I bit through the somewhat disjointed gameplay and that it was worth it, just the opposite is true. Just because something is interesting doesn’t mean it’s good. The beautiful visual doesn’t overshadow the highly abstract output, which doesn’t offer the player multiple possible interpretations, as would be appropriate, but leaves them wandering in the dark.

I wish I could say that, at least technically, Somerville is where it belongs. Of course, there were a few bugs, but first of all, I encountered a number of graphical glitches, not only in controlled sequences, but also in scripted animations. From time to time there was also a location where the image began to twitch unnaturally, which also did not contribute to the overall impression.

Although I have listed a really decent number of cons, Somerville is not a bad game a priori. I could forgive the authors a lot of what was said if the key flaw did not lie in my opinion in the gameplay concept. The third dimension gives rise to many problems, the most fundamental of which is the frustration of movement in the environment. In the end, I dare say that the title could well work in a similar 2.5D perspective as Inside, since most of the time the main character moves from left to right or more often from right to left (which is also a strange decision, but so be it).