izigame.me

Quite a disappointing game. While this games comes from some of the creators behind the game INSIDE, it does not share the same qualities that made INSIDE such a great game. Even unmoored from INSIDE, in its current state, Somerville does not stand out as a good game on its own.
The visuals and the audio are good (the sound design was actually FANTASTIC and probably the best aspect of the game). It shares a lot of the same visual design language as INSIDE, but that's about the only positive aspect of this game, and even then it comes with some caveats. While the visual elements and environments are striking and memorable, this game oddly seems to suffer from performance hitches. It was unplayable on the steam deck, averaging under 20 fps, but even when playing on a gaming desktop, there were still odd skips and stutters throughout the game. So the visual experience was a bit hindered by less than ideal performance. Another thing to note was that sometimes environments were a bit cluttered, mix in some interesting choices of camera angle, and I was often left confused as to where the player needed to go next to proceed. This persisted even as I was replaying sections of the game.
The biggest negative aspect of the game, and frankly, my biggest gripe with it, is the gameplay. The gameplay experience was marred by all sorts of bugs and glitches that ranged from mildly annoying to bugs that downright halted progress (fortunately for me, I didn't encounter any show stopping bugs until after my first playthrough, though my first playthrough still had many minor and moderate bugs.)
An example of an annoying bug was the inconsistency of interacting with objects. There'd be a lever that the player needs to pull, but more often than not pressing the interact button will do nothing unless the player positions their character in the EXACT position that the game wants you to be in.
This resulted in many puzzles taking more than twice as long to solve, as I often had to mash the interact button while shimmying my character in the hopes that they eventually interact with an object (on average I would try to interact with basic levers & doors about ten times before I would get it right.) This was especially frustrating on my first playthrough as I would enter a new puzzle area, attempt to interact with a lever/door/piece of debris/etc. and after 3 or so attempts to interact with an object, I would assume that I am incorrectly trying to interact with a piece of scenery, only to come back to that object and mash the button until my character would finally grab it.
Another negative example of the gameplay was the movement. Moving the character always felt like a chore more than anything. The movement speed of your character is always fluctuating depending on the context of the situation they're in. If they're being chased they will break into a run/sprint. If you're in a puzzle area your character will walk. My big issue isn't the context based movement speed, it's mainly the fine tuning and feel of it. The character's walking speed for most of the game is frustratingly slow. This was compounded by "point-and-click" style puzzles that often involve going back and forth in certain areas (this was exacerbated by the interaction bugs I mentioned above.) I found myself unconsiously straining the thumbstick against the edge of the controller as I was trying to get the character to pick up the pace. I would also hold down the interact button in the desperate hopes that my character will start sprinting like they would in the chase sequence just moments before. Another issue with the movement is that the joystick movement seems to be tied to the camera rather than the character, so even if your character just needs to move from left to right, since the camera will rotate to keep the character in frame, the angle that the joystick needs to be held at will fluctuate from one end of a room to another. I found myself looking down at my controller to see that, in order for my character to walk directly to the left, I had to push the joystick LEFT AND SLIGHTLY DOWN AT AN ANGLE. This is just a few examples of the weird dance I had to do just to get my character to walk in a straight line (and very often I still ran into my fair share of walls and obstacles.)
The story was... okay? Again, much like INSIDE (and by extension LIMBO) the story of the game includes no dialogue and is told purely by the actions, environments, and situations that the character finds themselves in. Without going into spoiler territory I will say that there are multiple endings, and by design the game will most likely have the player go with a "bad" ending on their first playthrough, which will leave the player with a lot of questions. In order to get to the "good" ending, you will have to play through the game and look for hints that you couldn't understand the first time around (you'll still probably be left with just as many questions though.)
The multiple endings isn't the issue, and neither is having to replay to get the "good" ending. The main problem with the story is that it's really hard to invest in the main character, and often the pacing of the game was so slow and stilted that I was often not thinking about the character's motivations. I think this is due to the middle section being too long, too slow, and too isolated from the main events of the story (avoiding spoilers but for those who've played I'm talking about the underground section.) Credit where it's due: there are a few set piece scenes in the game that were awesome and stunning (mainly the sequences with a lot of action and chaos,) but these didn't tend to pertain to our character's journey, and more or less served as theatrical eye candy.
So, to recap, Visuals&Sound were good, Gameplay was buggy and poor, Story was okay with some highs and some lows. The biggest problem is that INSIDE had, at least in my opinion, NAILED (dare I say PERFECTED) all of these criteria already!
INSIDE's Visuals&Sound were on par with Somerville (although Somerville often has larger scope than INSIDE.)
INSIDE's gameplay was near flawless in almost every aspect! Movement in INSIDE never felt frustrating, and the character handled interactions with puzzles and the environment with ease (the controls in INSIDE did a great job of inferring what the player's intent was rather than just bluntly feeding inputs to the character. ie: The character would often move itself towards objects if the player tried interacting with something that's slightly out of reach.)
The story is the most subjective point of comparison between the two games. Some people will like Somerville more for it's world building and high octane action (most of which is happening around the player rather than to the player.) Others will like INSIDE for it's thought provoking mysteries that slowly unfurl through the main character's journey. I will say that, at least to me, while both stories are cool, Somerville falls short when it comes to pacing and the payoff falls a bit flat as the story progresses, whereas INSIDE had me on the edge of my seat for the entire 3 hours of my first playthrough, and I still am intrigued by it's world years after. It also doesn't feel like Somerville has any moral or message to the story, whereas INSIDE has ideas and imagery that can be interpreted many different ways and can resonate with players on a deeper level.
To be frank, I tried to find the "good" ending for Somerville immediately after my first playthrough, and a few minutes in one of the puzzles glitched out and my character died. After a few seconds, I decided to look up a guide for all of the endings, because it simply wasn't worth my time fighting through all of the game's bugs.
If they update the game and fixed the interactivity issues that would honestly be enough for me to give it another go. But as of right now I'm uninstalling. Jumpship pls fix.