DARK SECRETS

The exclusive inside story of Jumpship’s mysterious sci-fi adventure Somerville

- Alex Spencer

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 dev blog 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.