Somerville is an atmospheric, 2.5D, narrative journey recreation from indie developer Jumpship. Created partly by co-founder of Playdead, Dino Patti, it’s clear this title’s inspiration got here from the likes of Limbo, Inside, and Little Nightmares. Somerville takes on silent storytelling by way of attractive environments and touching household scenes as you tackle the function of a father to somewhat boy. When an alien invasion separates you from your loved ones, you head out within the hopes of reuniting with them and discovering shelter to outlive the onslaught.
Alongside your journey to reconvene with your loved ones, you’ll be exploring varied attractive environments — forests, scrapyards, retailers, and so on. — and fixing easy puzzles to soundly navigate them. These conundrums have you ever wandering round darkish and dingy areas spamming X to determine what objects are interactive, since there aren’t any hints or prompts, and your imaginative and prescient is hindered by the mounted digital camera and low lighting. As soon as you’ve got squinted lengthy sufficient to make out the interactive objects, you have to exactly place your self to have the ability to use them, which is an extremely infuriating job.
The puzzles are enjoyably easy, nevertheless, involving pushing and pulling mine carts to climb, beginning up mills to energy lights, and utilizing movable cowl to keep away from insta-death laser beams. Even with the introduction of a few light-manipulating powers, the puzzle blockades by no means held us up longer than a few minutes, making for a brief however candy five-to-six-hour expertise all informed.
Though Somerville has some standout options, gorgeously peaceable environments, and atmospheric, silent storytelling, they’re considerably dulled by its horrible controls, terrible efficiency, and lack of exposition. Being restricted to strolling tempo and the trail ahead typically unclear, you regularly find yourself strolling into invisible limitations. There are big drops in body price all through, particularly when loading new areas, and the shortage of names and backstories for the household you are enjoying leaves you annoyed with little to no attachment to them and their eventual outcomes. Should you’re in search of a brief, touching title to tide you over till the following massive launch, this can be value a glance, however with all its points, it is higher off left alone at nighttime.
