Somerville is a spiritual sequel to Limbo, but with blockbuster scope

First, you need to know what it is. SomervilleSpiritual sequel: Limbo And InsideThe story is coherent. Its predecessors lived on the far end of the narrative spectrum, somewhere between “Buñuelian nightmare” and “that time you smoked salvia in college and disassociated while reading Orwell.” But Somerville, well, it’s a bit normal. At first.

It Somerville elevator pitch needs only one floor: “What if someone finally made War of the Worlds into a decent video game?” Because H.G. Wells’ novel (and its countless variants) has achieved that rarified level of pop culture ubiquity, the early beats will be familiar: a bit of domestic bliss interrupted by an apocalyptic alien invasion; Earth’s collapse from the POV of the folks on the ground; the distant possibility of a counter maneuver to gird humanity from total annihilation.

This time, rather than follow the president or the world’s sexiest scientist, we get a guy who just wants to see his wife and kid again. He has no gift for violence or survival skills beyond an elevated capacity to solve problems on the spot. He’s like a particularly clever and/or lucky ant skittering to stay alive during a family picnic.

And that’s not all War of the Worlds adaptations, Somerville has most in common with Steven Spielberg’s Tom Cruise vehicle, released a few years after the 9/11 attacks. Cars zip erratically along a highway, fleeing in a direction where things are probably just as bad — maybe worse. Survivors seek refuge in drains and gather at emergency evac centres. An outdoor festival is abandoned — as if its partygoers had been raptured.

In Somerville, the hero solves puzzles by using magical light to transmogrify materials into stone and liquid. Here, he is melting a wall to escape his home.

This is a videogame, so our man can go out into the dark with superhuman powers. The father has an encounter with an alien soldier during the aftermath of the invasion. He is able to transform light from a source of darkness into an instrument that can bend the world with a simple tap of his fingers.

If he touches any desk lamp, ceiling fan or spotlight, blue energy can be channeled through the current. It transforms natural white light into the seafoam glow, which melts alien material into a form of living goop. Soon, however, he gains a red energy which instantly solidifies the alien material into rock. Most of the game’s puzzles involve the dissolving and restoring of materials, liquifying stones to fill a gap with melted other-world sludge, then hardening its surface so that the guy and his dog can hobble across the crust.

The dad embarks on an adventure across the world, which looks somewhat like our own but is moodier and more demolished. The game is very similar to the Playdead games. Walking left and right in a 2D space allows you to solve puzzles, hide from impossible enemies, and piece together a story using pantomime instead of dialogue.

In the beginning of Somerville, an alien soldier offers an average man a supernatural power.

But this isn’t a Playdead game. After the publication of InsideDino Patti, Playdead’s co-founder, and executive producer, left Playdead and started Jumpship where he hired talented new people. Somerville’s director and writer, Chris Olsen, came from the world of animation, and from that, he brings a more acute interest in the cinematic — not just in blockbuster set-pieces, but the little things too: the wide shot and the close-up.

The game may look simple at first glance, but it is very different once you get into the details. Limbo Oder InsideThe similarities continue on their journey, and the snake sheds its skin as it chafes.

How do you interpret that? Basically, the game works best when it’s not being much of a game at all. The guy walks out of his home and leans against the doorframe, cranes his neck to search for his dog. When he evades the spotlights of a behemoth alien ship, the camera pulls back until he’s a spot on the screen. Because every creature, catastrophe and character has received so much care and attention, you can see that an animator was more skilled than usual. We’ve seen this level of detail — in which characters engage with the world and the people around them — in mega-budget projects like Part 2 of The Last of UsIt is rare that animation can be prioritized in this game.

A husband and wife try to escape their home during an alien apocalypse in Somerville.

Speaking of: As the adventure finds its footing, its creators seem to lose interest in puzzles altogether — for the better, frankly. They are easy, tedious and somewhat forgettable. In the back half, our guy’s journey skews closer to the Walking Simulators of the 2010s, where the only real obligation is to keep moving forward. This too comes with some minor irritation, as the game’s dark visuals and the character’s diminutive size can lead to confusion about how to interact with the world. Occasionally, I understood where the game wanted me to go, but couldn’t immediately grasp how it expected me to, say, climb a rock or swim across a pond. The most frustrating thing was the small number of sudden-death actions that interrupted the flow, causing me to restart three or four times.

These weaknesses were not addressed Inside Limbo, and it’s disappointing to see them now span three games over 12 years, presumably following creative talent from one studio to another.

The problems could be caused by the design of the game, which I believe is a good thing. The designer may not be able to solve the problem, but the player. How I have played this platforming game over time has also changed. They’re narratively static, built like movies, moving from scene to scene in precisely the same manner every time. Now, they are like movie scenes for me to perform. I use the first playthrough as a dress rehearsal and script notation, which allows me to iron out any kinks. As I perform the entire journey, the second playthrough becomes the actual game. The game is now a spectacle because I achieved my goals.

A man looks at a crashed jet plane covered in alien stone in Somerville.

I wonder if Somerville The expectation is that most players will experience a similar experience. Players hit the credits to start all over. This time they’ll have less interest in solving puzzles and more in the cinematic. The game’s short run time (only a few hours) and the possibility of alternate endings (we’ll leave that to Reddit and YouTube to unpack) suggest as much.

For the second playthrough, I switched from Steam Deck to a large TV, making the second playthrough even more of a departure, because while this game doesn’t look like a AAA game, it feels like one. Make sure you have the highest quality headphones or speakers available to play this game on your largest screen.

Somerville It is an exquisite, delicious way to close a wonderful year. You could just leave it at that. But I’d like to pull back, one last time, to the game’s pedigree. Because beyond being an entertaining video game, Somerville carries an unusual amount of game industry significance — or baggage — depending on your angle of approach.

A millenial-aged father, mother, son, and dog sleep on the couch in front of a glowing TV in Somerville.

Playdead, a Danish company, released their 2010 album LimboThis is the very first game to be connected via internet and digital storesfronts. A small team could reach a huge audience without appearing on the shelf at Walmart — and without all the associated overhead costs. Inside appeared six years later in the thick of the “indiepocalypse,” when those same online stores had become overcrowded with dozens of new releases each week. Reviewers paid attention to its predecessor, while its high quality garnered it top marks. This elevated the dystopian yarn far above its contemporaries. Six years on, and we are finally at the conclusion. SomervilleThis game, which shows how independent games have become less-indie than they used to be, shows that an established talent can afford the time and resources necessary to separate and succeed. What’s more, Jumpship has partnered with Microsoft to be available at launch on Game Pass, drawing a direct line from Limbo’s Xbox Live Arcade, original appearance. They are the upstarts.

Naturally Inside developer Playdead still exists. In 2020, Playdead announced a partnership to Epic Games (games publisher) This historic indie-game trilogy may be completed when that partnership bears fruit. This is the With Somerville in the world as an interim conclusion, of sorts, it’s safe to expect that both the original plant and its cutting will be just fine, branching in their own moody and lovely ways.

I have kept one thing from you, and that’s the final act. Limbo, Particularly Inside, Remember that an unforgettable ending is key to a great game. Somerville retains this lesson, and for all its familiarity and narrative clarity, the game loosens its grip on the wheel until suddenly it’s careening off-road into… something you will have to experience for yourself.

So, I would guess that SomervilleThe most welcoming game of them all, it starts with the familiar and then moves in a slow exponential direction upwards to the unusual. Wise choice. While it takes a lot of skill to create a playable movie, there is nothing like the strangeness and ambiguity that video games offer.

Somerville On Nov. 15, the game will release on Windows PC and Xbox One. The Xbox Series X version of Game Pass is also available. Jumpship gave the code to review the game on PC. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.