‘Somerville’ review: A dull journey across the end of the world

Somerville’s alien invasion lands not with a bang, but a whimper.

August 31, 2023

Somerville starts small with a family having fallen asleep together on the couch. It then grows as the family is swept up in an alien invasion, and the plot focuses on a desperate father just trying to reunite with his wife and child amidst the wreckage of their planet by two warring factions. He’ll journey across damaged and haunting landscapes and use his newfound powers to traverse the environment and evade alien enemies. Unfortunately, as Somerville progresses it begins to drag to the finish line and ultimately collapses under its own weight, becoming a largely forgettable experience.

I’m always down for a heart-wrenching alien invasion story, and initially Somerville delivers on its very The War of the Worlds-like premise. It begins by incapacitating its hero after he makes contact with a very human-like alien, absorbing their power and knocking him out for long enough that his wife eventually decides to take their child and find safety. Once he wakes, he sets out with the family dog – who’ll disappear and inexplicably reappear when the level demands it – to find his loved ones.

It’s the type of premise that instantly makes you get behind your player character, but as he doesn’t speak, rarely reacts, and underwhelms with his emotional expression, I ultimately lost interest in him and his journey. The emotional climax halfway through falls flat for me as the protagonist barely seems to feel anything at all; without dialogue and detailed facial animation, the protagonist has an air of disinterest about him, which in turn makes me lose interest. Wordless storytelling can certainly work, and I do love me some opaque plots. But in Somerville’s case, I think the story and its emotional beats would have benefited from more explicitly told and emoted scenes. If the game did make me connect to its characters more, I think the final quarter of the game and its multiple endings would have hit harder. As it stood, I was simply trudging through the ill-defined final chapters waiting for credits to roll.

'Somerville' review: A dull journey across the end of the world

An example of how the protagonist uses his powers to manipulate his environment and progress in the level.

Gameplay consists mostly of navigating the protagonist through drab and dreary levels. He stalks across war-torn environments – an abandoned outdoor music festival, a battered town – and uses his newfound alien powers to press forward. The protagonist gains the ability to manipulate some sort of alien matter when he’s in contact with a light source. Holding down the left trigger will cause the matter to melt away while, eventually, the right trigger will allow him to harden the matter.

These light-based abilities are used to solve sometimes rudimentary, sometimes unclear puzzles. The gameplay is nothing special, and I largely found it benign. Some puzzles make good use of the matter manipulation powers, but none of the puzzles were particularly noteworthy and were often either too simple or mechanically frustrating. Somerville includes a few stealth-adjacent sections where the protagonist must invade dog-like aliens ready to pounce. If I could have skipped those sections, I would have as being instantly killed upon getting spotted was never what I would call fun.

The camera, however, frustrated me to no end. It’s fixed, making moving through the environment very annoying at times. I often would run into some sort of barrier – a rock, a wall I couldn’t see, random items on the floor – and fumble my way around environments. Sometimes I’d stumble around trying to find the path forward as the depth of field combined with the immobile camera could make it unclear as to where the level continued.

These alien invaders just don’t quit!

Somerville’s art style bounces between some beautiful design choices and generic indie polygons. It has a very minimalist style, similar to something like Ashen, and is very geometric in similar ways that Tunic was, though without Tunic’s incredible lighting. I did experience minor frame rate stutters, though they were only ever minor annoyances. One of Somerville’s highlights is its music; the opening credit sequence is set to a gorgeous theme, and composers Dominque Charpentier and Matteo Cerquone certainly knock the soundtrack out of the park. I could have done with more of it even as the game often goes extremely quiet and devoid of music for a large swath of its gameplay.

You’ll have maneuver around the purple light to avoid getting snatched up by the alien obelisk.

The game does take full advantage of the DualSense’s haptics. Playing with a PlayStation 5 review code, I was able to fully experience the unique haptic feedback. The rumble feels great and even intense, at times, when the protagonist uses his light powers, and the controller’s lightbar will even change color to reflect the power. Tension in the triggers is a nice touch and really makes you work to use the powers in some sequences, especially in the endgame. While we’ve yet to fully experience what the DualSense’s haptics are capable of, Somerville does at least make good use of them.

Developer Jumpship’s debut Somerville has all the hallmarks of an indie hit: it tells a tragic story; it nails a popular indie aesthetic and couples that with an excellent soundtrack; and it makes great use of current-gen features, the DualSense’s haptic feedback. However, the crux of the game – its attempted heart-wrenching story – didn’t connect with me, making me care little about its events, characters, and world by the end. The gameplay doesn’t pick up any slack, being dull one moment and annoying the next. I’ve often seen Somerville go on sale for $6.99 on other platforms and I’d recommend you wait until it drops to a similar price for the PS5. Due to the haptics, I imagine the PS5 is the best platform to play Somerville on, if you decide to play it at all.