Somerville tells the story of a family separated at the onset of an extraterrestrial invasion, and one man’s quest to be reunited with them in a freshly post-apocalyptic world filled with all manner of threats.
Made by Jumpship, a studio founded by Dino Patti, who previously co-founded Limbo and Inside developer Playdead, Somerville has a similar feel to those games. It tells its story without uttering a single word, and while it’s maybe a little more transparent than its spiritual predecessors at Playdead, it still packs in plenty of mysteries, and leaves a lot open to interpretation.
So for those who have already completed the game (or those who absolutely do not mind SPOILERS), we’ll explain the game’s story, try to unravel its key mysteries, and explain all those endings. This will be less a beat-by-beat walkthrough of the whole game, and more honing in on the key events throughout that warrant deeper explanation.
Somerville starts out with a family (a mother, a toddler, a dog, and a father, who you’ll be playing as) falling asleep in front of the TV on a cosy night in. Some time later, the family wakes up to a loud crash. You (playing the father) go outside to see that an alien object has crashed in your backyard, and the sky is filled with giant floating obelisks. The planet is under attack from extraterrestrial invaders.
It appears that humanity (or, possibly, another advanced humanoid species) is fighting back however, as we see the obelisks being attacked by small craft seemingly powered by the same blue, red and purple energies you see wielded by the aliens and you throughout the game.
After fleeing back to the basement of your family home, a person wearing futuristic blue armour crashes through your ceiling – most likely a fallen soldier defending against the invasion.
This person reaches out to you in what seems to be a last gasp of life, and you reach out to touch their hand. This causes an explosion of energy, and a flashback to that soldier being prepared for battle on a vessel that you visit later in the game. You then pass out, waking up to find your wife and child gone.
Your hand is now imbued with blue glowing energy, which you can combine with electric and light sources to melt down alien objects. Later in the game, you get a corresponding red energy from another fallen soldier, which can do the reverse and solidify blue alien objects. Combining these energies causes a purple energy to form. Notably, this three-coloured technology seems to be used both by the humans and the alien invaders.
The flashback also suggests that the dying soldier transferred some part of their consciousness to you before they died. This would also explain why the other two Super Soldiers soldiers are able to track and help you throughout the game–their consciousness is now bound to yours. Now that you wield the blue power, you’re a vital part of humanity’s bid to free itself of the invaders, which is why the red and purple soldiers go to such great lengths to protect you on your journey.
Stepping out of your home, it looks like weeks or even months have passed since the invasion, because all is quiet, people have disappeared, and the landscape is littered with bits of alien craft and artefacts. Not too far into the game you’ll find evidence to suggest that humans have been ‘surviving’ in this world for a fair bit of time.
Soon after, you encounter metal soccer-sized balls that follow you around, and seem to be communicating with you via light patterns. They help you out by disintegrating the various pieces of alien craft scattered around the place. You can also learn elements of the alien language if you study them carefully, and watch their reactions at certain points. This way, you’ll be better equipped to communicate with the aliens at the end of the game.
As you walk across the barren landscape, all of humanity is seemingly gone, and the land is patrolled by mechanised four-legged robots and purple spotlights. These things aren’t trying to kill you, but capture and store you in one of those pods you’ll be saving people from later in the game.
At one point, the Red Super Soldier saves you from one of the robots, then dies when breaking your fall into a pit. The Red Soldier conveys his power to you just like the blue one did earlier, which is the first sign that maybe these three Super Soldiers have been trying to convey their powers to you all along, because maybe you’ve been singled out as the person who can wield them all at once, thereby being able to communicate with the aliens.
As he dies, the Red Soldier gives you a vision of a church, which is where you head after reuniting with your family. You and your family get chased by the aliens to the top of this church, where you’re once again separated when you manage to hop aboard one of those high-tech ships used by the humans but your family doesn’t.
You’re flown off to an underwater military facility, where your skills with the red and blue energies are observed, and are then reunited with the Purple Super Soldier who evacuated you from the cathedral. Together with him, you power up a launcher that cannonballs the two of you into the heart of an alien obelisk.
Aboard the alien obelisk, it seems the aliens are keeping people trapped in pods where they’re living out simulated realities. You start rescuing the kids from the pods, but then get caught in the act, sucked into the ground, and then thrown into your own simulation that puts you back home on your couch with your family. Everything is lovely, but it’s an illusion, and using your blue and red powers you start to shatter the simulation, falling through into simulations of different events you’ve already experienced in the game.
Your resolve will be tested in these simulations. There will be a couple of scenes where you see your family sitting on the same couch from the start of the game. Sitting on any of these couches triggers the Resignation ending. Essentially, you’re succumbing to the aliens’ simulations and therefore trapping yourself in there along with the rest of humanity.
Using your powers, you eventually manage to break through to a simulation of someone else’s memories, where you see the blue, red, and purple Super Soldiers standing together on a launchpad. The red and blue soldier, as we know, are dead, so we can deduce from this that we’re inside the simulation of the purple soldier with whom we infiltrated the obelisk. This is her simulation–a fantasy in which her fellow comrades are still alive and well, and the war against the aliens is won.
When you arrive, the purple soldier snaps out of it, realising it’s an illusion. She touches your hand, and with your powers combined you cause an explosion big enough to break you free from the pod you were trapped in inside the obelisk. You’ve now absorbed the third and final power needed to communicate with the aliens.
Using your new powers, you start freeing children from their simulation pods, when the purple spotlight falls on you again. This time however, instead of falling through the floor into another simulation, you’re pulled up into the sky where you’ll get an audience with the apparent leaders of the aliens. It seems that you finally got their attention.
As you walk through a void inside the alien ship (in the background, you can see the slit-like opening that you flew in through), three giant sentient obelisks emerge from the liquid–one blue, one red, one purple–much like the three Super Soldiers troopers who have been helping you on your journey. Holding hands with what are probably the children you’ve managed to save from their simulations, you’re able to send massive waves of red, blue and purple energy to communicate with the aliens.
Your decisions here with the obelisks will affect the ending of the game, and the fate of humanity.
Somerville Endings, Explained
For information on how to achieve all of the available endings in Somerville, see our Somerville Endings Guide. Here, we will simply
Resignation
As covered earlier, you get these endings for sitting on one of the simulated couches in Chapter 12. You’re settling for a simulacrum of your happy life, and are therefore choosing the easiest way out.
Resignation Reprise
This is what you get for walking into the house that the aliens present you with. It is, of course, only a simulation, so by choosing this you’re choosing the ‘easy way out’ and effectively trapping yourself in the alien ship again. The post-credits scene shows that things don’t end well for humanity.
War of the worlds
If you choose to cut off communication with the aliens by holding LT+RT until everything blows up, then it’s implied that you’ve brought about the destruction of your species. After the credits, you see your dog back at your house, with the winds starting to rise, seemingly building towards some kind of world-ending scenario.
Family First
The alien present you with the pod containing your wife and child, but to open it you need to expend all your energy and sacrifice your own life. While admirable, it’s obviously not a happy ending, and while your family’s been freed, you’re dead and most of humanity remains trapped by the aliens.
Understanding
The ‘good ending.’ By getting a proper handle on the alien language (which you can do by watching those small metal balls from earlier in the game), you learn to ask for what you truly want, which is to be reunited with your family and for the aliens to free
Enduring Mysteries
The above should explain the thrust of Somerville’s story, but even then there are burning questions that the game doesn’t explicitly answer. These include:
- Why are aliens putting people in simulations? Are their intentions good or bad?
- Are the First Contact Balls we encounter early on alien technology, or belonging to the humans/humanoids?
- Are the Super Soldiers and their secret army Earth-based/human, or are they extraterrestrial too? Is their underwater base perhaps just their outpost on Earth, and Earth has become a battleground between one alien force and another?
All this stuff is down to individual interpretation and theories, and while we could offer our ideas on them, our guess is as good as yours, so we’ll hand it over to you, good reader, too fill out your head canon for the game yourself!
