DARK SECRETS
Game Somerville
Developer/publisher Jumpship
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Origin UK
Release 2022
An alien monolith looms ominously over a humble farmhouse. A young family huddles on a sofa, asleep in front of a TV that suddenly drops to static. An enormous sci-fi structure shudders violently, two tiny human specks caught within a blinding purple light. Whether their scope is mundane or epic, Somerville is loaded with strong images such as these, which helped it stand out from the crowd at E3 2021’s Xbox showcase and again at The Game Awards in December. Those trailers are dense bursts of imagery, cutting from one moment to the next without explanation of how they connect, what the game between them might actually be.
Naturally, then, when we sit down for our demo of the game, as the first media representatives to see Somerville up close – and the last until the game is ready for release – an explanation is precisely what we seek.
Somerville’s development hasn’t always been such a closely guarded secret. In 2014, Chris Olsen launched a devblog for the game, a side project worked on alongside his day job, working as a film animator and previs artist on everything from Marvel and Star Wars movies to the Wachowskis’ weirdo science-fiction opus Jupiter Ascending. The GIFs he posted drew attention with their stylish character designs and gorgeously fluid animations – that knack for tantalising bursts of imagery already at work – resulting in a partnership with Dino Patti, co-founder and former CEO of Playdead. With Patti having just departed the Danish studio following the release of Inside, he and Olsen announced in 2017 that they would be building a new company, the aptly named Jumpship, around this project. And then the walls went up.
Since then, less than five minutes of Somerville footage has been released, every second made public carefully selected to retain the mystery. Each trailer has suggested an art style quite unlike the one in which Olsen was originally working – and one that, as we learn, has changed multiple times over the course of development. Following our hourlong demo, with Olsen leading us on a whistle-stop tour of sections picked from across the story, we have a much clearer idea of what Somerville is. And, perhaps more importantly, what it isn’t.
Among the things it’s not: the game that Olsen was originally making in 2014. The story – an ordinary-style cinematic action adventure has been ditched since then. “It used to be 2D; now we’ve changed it into a 3D game,” Olsen explains. “It used to have a jump and then I was like, I don’t want to jump. I don’t want it to be a platformer.”
