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I make a habit of checking the Xbox Game Pass “Leaving Soon” tab every month to find any gems I might have overlooked. This month Somerville caught my eye.
First Impressions
The cover art really evokes the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds and I found the artwork compelling. That was enough to get me to try it.
On opening a new game I always check the achievements tab to get an idea of what I’m working with.
With this kind of indie title I’m typically looking for a short list of gamerscore heavy achievements and that’s exactly what I got with Somerville. Short and sweet.
Overview
Somerville is a fixed camera adventure puzzle game. The bulk of the game is traveling on foot through an apocalyptic countryside in the wake of an alien invasion solving environmental puzzles to progress while avoiding danger.
It’s a bit slow paced and the controls were annoyingly sluggish at times but piecing together the narrative was interesting because there is no spoken or written word in the whole game.
Story
Upon starting a new game we get a pretty lengthy cutscene of a family (mother, father, toddler and dog) driving home, somewhere out in the countryside of I want to say Europe?
After falling asleep in front of the TV the family is rudely awakened by an alien invasion. While they attempt to hide in the basement an alien crashes through the ceiling and whilst dying reaches out to transfer a mysterious blue power to your character, the husband.
In doing so you are knocked into a coma and when you awaken you find yourself alone in the remains of your basement with only your loyal dog watching over you. Time to find your family.
Gameplay
The vast majority of this game is just getting from point A to point B heading generally west. Your dog is with you a lot of the time and will occasionally give helpful clues as to what your supposed to be doing in a given area in case it isn’t obvious by sitting near a point of interest.
Interactive objects generally have something yellow on them to draw focus. There were a few places I got stuck and had to restart a checkpoint to work my way through a puzzle but largely they weren’t too difficult.
Overall I enjoyed the puzzle sections and the powers gimmick. You can melt/solidify certain alien materials in the world using blue or red alien powers respectively in conjunction with any light source. This made for some very interesting puzzle design unlike any I’ve seen before.
There are some stealth sections that I didn’t love but the most annoying segments were the “run for your life” bits. Neither the controls nor the camera setup are suited to rapid movement and those areas became frustrating.
Final Verdict
Somerville is a solid title. It’s got some decent challenge without ever going too far into frustrating. The story is a fun blend of a lot of classic sci-fi touchstones and genuine heart. Nothing groundbreaking but endearingly familiar. 7.5/10
