Somerville review: the most beautiful game I’ve ever played
I was enraptured from the start out. A toddler ambles all around a home, stuffed only by the mild of a TV’s static, as the moms and dads sleep on the couch. It is the most not likely opening to a story about an invasion, but one that presents you all the details you require to be invested. A minimal-essential, particular disaster film starts in the moments that follow, and I was hooked through the hours that proceeded.
Jumpship has made a activity that is challenging to determine. Though it loosely feels comparable to studio co-founder Dino Patti’s Within (which he produced at Playdead), Somerville is on an completely grander, more lovely scale. It is, despite some fiddly moments, a quite impressive sci-fi adventure, and an astonishing achievement for author/director Chris Olsen and the group. 
This short article is going to be short, only in component because of to the fact that I’m pushed for time. I simply never want to say also considerably about what happens in Somerville – itself a game that packs a ton into a fairly transient runtime. On a purely practical level, this is a sort of evolution of Inside of, in so considerably as a great deal of the activity is put in strolling all around with your character, extra or fewer viewing the sights. There’s much more exploration here than in Inside of, even though, and the setting is a lot more interactive, but this isn’t a platformer of any description. 
Somerville is however quite significantly what I guess you’d describe as an “interactive experience” instead than a “gamey video game movie match for gamers,” but you can wander about with a bit a lot more flexibility than I envisioned. This has thrown in a handful of regrettable command oddities, this kind of as the character once in a while currently being unwilling to do the thing you clearly know you have to have to do (turning a crank, for case in point). At worst this is mildly annoying, nevertheless – not game breaking – but sad to say can be a slight yank out of the immersion.
A disgrace, as that immersion is really a little something. There are puzzles – most of which aren’t overly obtuse, relying on typical feeling on the full – but the star here is the world itself. The delicate particulars that imply functions that have transpired. You’ve arrived right after the tale has been told, only in a position to piece collectively what’s long gone on as you undertaking forward in an try to place your personal life again together following a calamitous planet-shattering party.
There is doubtless heading to be reams and reams of critical thought about what Somerville says, but for me it finished up getting fairly very simple, irrespective of not still totally comprehending the game’s climactic times. I’m eager to delve further with more playthroughs and hear to what others make of certain scenes, but I was remaining with a deep perception of loss and regret. At one particular position, my encounter staring again at me as I played into the night time on my Steam Deck, my eyes welled up – a moment so ideal, so emotive, I’m nevertheless considering about it. Times later. 
In truth of the matter, I’m not the biggest thinker when it comes to media. I observe a movie, read through a reserve, engage in a recreation, and choose what is happened at facial area price. If meaning is hidden guiding a 10k-write-up Reddit thread, then, effectively, maybe it wasn’t conveyed perfectly ample. Somerville does not have this dilemma. It’s influencing in all the appropriate means, and a video game I actually simply cannot recommend strongly more than enough.