Shortly after the release of Inside there was a dust-up at developer Playdead where one of their co-founders left and it was a big mess. Well here we are six years later and that founder’s new studio shipped their first game: *Somerville.

It’s very much in the same vein as Playdead’s previous works. It’s an art-first cinematic action-adventure game, focus on the adventure. Graphically it reminds me of Another World, but actual 3d not rotoscoped. Gameplay is basically like Inside and Limbo before it, you explore an environment, find things to interact with, solve pretty simple puzzles to progress. Then you eventually get a power that lets you solve other kinds of puzzles. Move right. Repeat.

The main differentiating aspect of the game is that it’s more sci-fi than horror. Playdead’s games were both pretty grim and gruesome. Somerville is distinctly not focused on showing the outcome of the failure states . . or . . uhh . . anything like the end of Inside. There’s definitely still suspense and stakes and failure states, it just doesn’t linger.

My run-through of the game ran – again – right around 3 hours flat. There’s some retreading at the end, but it’s not a slog.

And finally, just like Inside and Limbo, I have exactly the same assessment. It was good, I recommend it, but I probably wouldn’t pay for it. Good news is – yet again – it’s on Game Pass.

(Oh, and also like Inside there are a scant few achievements, and there’s pretty granular chapter select so I’m probably going to go back and 100% the game.)