Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Feiyun

In the output of independent games, the core creators and writers are the most important.

In November 2022, the plot adventure game "Somerville" was released. It was developed by independent game studio Jumpship, whose founder Dino Patti previously worked as the producer of the independent masterpieces "Hell's Frontier" and "Inside." so Somerville attracted a lot of attention when it was released, and was regarded by many players as the "spiritual sequel" of the two masterpieces.

In fact, Somerville received a lacklustre response after its launch, with mixed reviews on Steam. Although there is no lack of magnificent scenery and excellent performance in the game, the overall playability has not satisfied the players.

The quality of spiritual sequels is not as good as Noumenon is nothing new in the industry. The birth of many so-called spiritual sequels is full of twists and turns, which is also reflected in Somerville: producer Dino Patti was once one of the co-founders of independent studio Playdead, and the only two games that Playdead has sold so far are Hell Frontier and Inside. However, in the production of these two masterpieces, Arnt Jensen, another founder of Playdead, is the more important creative contributor, as does the lead designer Jeppe Carlsen. As a result, the cooperation of the three men was not very harmonious, and there had been infighting among Playdead in 2015, and finally Dino Patti left to start Jumpship, but his first game, Somerville, got off to a bad start.

Somerville tells a doomsday story in which the play and style are similar to those of the two masterpieces. Somerville may not be able to recreate the good reputation of "Hell Border" and "Inside", which may once again show that in the output of independent games, the core creator and creator is the most important.

There are some spoilers in this article, please consider whether to continue reading. )

Mediocre quality "Somerville" has been made for a long time. Its overall concept was put forward by designer Chris Olsen in 2014, and in 2016, Dino Patti took a fancy to the conceptual design and began to turn it into a game. From the year when construction began, Somerville took more than six years to come out.

The development time does not match the reputation of the game. Only a few media gave it a score of more than 80, while most media only gave it a score of 70 or even lower. For the player rating section of Metacritic, the Somerville PC version only got 5.0 Magi Xbox version, and it was as low as 4.6. More importantly, in terms of popularity, there are not enough players discussing "Somerville". There are only 411 reviews on the Steam page, and many people have no idea that such a game is on sale.

Compared with Hell's Frontier and Inside, Somerville's scores are awkward: as independent games, Hell's Border and Inside have won high marks in the media and players, winning numerous awards and nominations for various games, and are still talking about them in the player community.

Of course, the response to Somerville is mediocre, and the key issue is mediocre quality.

The art of "Somerville" is really amazing. Compared with the previous 2D space adventures, this work adds an in-depth design, which expands the scope of the protagonist's activities and makes the game picture show a more open sense of grandeur. Some scenes have the meaning of sci-fi movies such as salute "coming".

This may be because the lead designer, Chris Olsen, has been engaged in film animation for a long time. Chris Olsen has worked for Sony and worked on games such as Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword, as well as Hollywood movies such as Thor, James Bond: the Breaking Skylight crisis, Avengers 2, and so on. Therefore, Somerville was amazing from the beginning of the concept map, and in the end, the actual picture effect and the overall sci-fi atmosphere are quite good, and the game has been highly recognized by the media and players in this respect.

Increase the grand vision of in-depth change in terms of story and play, Somerville does not show the same level as the picture.

As far as the story is concerned, there is no lack of features in the plot, but it still has a strong sense of perspective in Hollywood sci-fi films: the ordinary male protagonist suddenly encounters the great disaster of aliens coming to Earth. Accidentally acquired the superpower of the blue hero in the three Heroes of Man. Because the power is too strong, the hero faints and wakes up to find his wife and children gone. Only the dog follows him.

When people sleep at home, suddenly you are asked to be the hero of saving the world, and then the plot develops like many movies and games, in which the hero goes to find his wife and children, and gradually gains the ability of the other two of the three heroes of mankind. finally, to face the aliens and negotiate with each other.

In order to add more depth to this stereotyped story, the creators introduced concepts such as testing and hallucinations. In the game, aliens can use three special kinds of light energy to influence or test humans and catch children into hallucinations. At the end of the game, all the hero has to do is enter the realm of hallucinations to save the children and the purple heroes who fall into the hallucinations-but even with these, players can still see the shadow of communication between humans and alien civilizations in the movie "coming". And the part of "Men embark on adventures to find their wives and children" is numerous in films and games.

European and American works of art often take the family as the theme, and the same is true of this work, which may be the reason why Somerville is difficult to form a heated discussion at the story level. If both "Hell's Frontier" and "Inside" explore extreme control and mental confinement in depth through games, then the story of Somerville falling into a stereotype is not much deeper than that of common commercial games-- it's even like the 3A masterpiece Quantum Breaking, which Microsoft made a lot of effort to produce, and both games try to tell a story that is very deep and socially meaningful. In the end, they all become vulgar works. Coincidentally, there is an obvious rush in the final stage of the two works, the details are unclear and the plot turns too quickly.

In addition to the story, the system and play of Somerville also caused a lot of dissatisfaction.

For comparison, there are a lot of exquisite puzzles that players need to think about in "Hell Border" and "Inside". These puzzles are more diversified and always bring players a sense of freshness.

Most of the puzzles in Somerville are lost to repetition, for example, in the first half of the game, the hero is often looking for lights, then activating his blue powers, and then emitting light to remove obstacles in the way. Although there are thrilling moments when players need to avoid being killed by alien light, this method of using light and shadow to create dangers and puzzles has long been used many times in Hell's Frontier and Inside.

Many of the puzzles in Inside are exquisitely designed.

Looking for lights to remove obstacles, designers do not seem to have figured out how to show the game design to players step by step, so that players can get a good experience. In fact, there is no lack of in-depth design in the game. For example, the colors of the costumes of the three human heroes (blue, red and purple) correspond to the colors of the three special light energies of aliens, which can be seen as that human beings have acquired these three abilities in the process of studying alien science and technology. and the protagonist gathered three abilities at the end of the story because of coincidence. So he has the ability to communicate with aliens-when the hero finally communicates with the aliens, he needs the player to respond through a combination of three colors. "Blue, Red and Purple" means friendly and peaceful, and "Red and Purple" means to help.

The best thing here is that in the game, players need to always pay attention to the graffiti of children on the wall, analyze what the various color combinations represent, and finally choose the right answer when answering alien questions. to achieve a happy ending-to save his wife and children while finally reconciling the two civilizations.

However, the most interesting system and related puzzles do not appear until the end of the game. Prior to this, even if the players gradually acquired the three abilities of the three human heroes, they would be dragged into drowsiness by the previous mediocre and repeated puzzles, and the experience would be greatly reduced.

Generally speaking, Somerville's design cannot be said to be without ideas, but the final result is a work that is more enjoyable than playable and not too deep, and the overall limit is relatively limited. More importantly, because of the "Hell Border" and "Inside" beads, some of the designs in Somerville are difficult to bring players a sense of "flat thunder". Perhaps only the three-color combination design at the end will be remembered by players.

It is no accident that Dino Patti, the product of infighting, left Playdead to start his own business.

Playdead is a game studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2017, Danish local media revealed that Playdead had a serious internal struggle in 2015: Dino Patti thought the studio's development pace was too slow and competed with another founder, Arnt Jensen, for ownership of the game. At one point, the two men did not communicate directly, but competed for control of the company through lawyers.

Also in 2015, Dino Patti kicked Arnt Jensen out of management, while Arnt Jensen's lawyer rejected Dino Patti's claim that Arnt Jensen was the creative director, saying Arnt Jensen was still the co-owner of the company. Then things reversed, and when Denmark's local business regulator stepped in, it was Dino Patti who left the company. When he left, he received a termination fee of $7.2 million.

The protagonist of our story today, Dino Patti2017 year, Dino Patti founded Jumpship. In 2018, Jumpship also accepted investment from Chinese manufacturers.

Although neither Dino Patti nor Aent Jensen was willing to disclose more details at the time, after leaving Playdead and founding Jumpship, Dino Patti made an intriguing statement in an interview with the media: "it's an internal contradiction in the company, the situation is a little delicate, and it includes some personal reasons." In fact, I like Playdead very much, it is deep in my heart. I like the people there. They are still my friends. Even if I develop a new work, I still communicate with almost everyone there. "

Dino Patti also seems to want to show that the infighting was not due to the slow progress of Playdead's game development: "We should pay more attention to the quality of the game than whether it will be available on time. Many games are of poor quality because developers care more about the time it takes to complete the game."

It took four years for Playdead to make "the Border of Hell," and the production cycle of "Inside" lasted as long as six years, whether Dino Patti wanted to explain himself for that year or to make sure that Somerville's development went well. In the end, Somerville failed to verify what he once said that not all the games that took a long time to make were of high quality.

As for Playdead, the studio's next game is still a long way off after the release of "Inside" in 2016. In October 2018, it was reported that Arnt Jensen was developing a "rather lonely science fiction game" set somewhere in the universe. Later, Arnt Jensen himself confirmed the news of the new book, when he said: "it's going to be a bigger game than the first two, it's more open, it's a third-person game, and there's a wider area for you to move. I'm tired of the limitations of 2D games, and we've been through it over the years." However, although the picture space has changed from 2D to 3D Jensen Arnt Arnt also stressed that the new game will maintain the thinking and emotional characteristics of the first two works in the studio.

Of course, like previous Playdead games, Arnt Jensen doesn't mention the release date at all, and fans don't expect the studio to commit to a specific production plan or update it regularly.

In 2017, Arnt Jensen was "a man of his word" at the British Film Academy Awards, and players waited for three years. In 2021, game analyst MauroNL unveiled a concept map of Playdead's new work and revealed that it will be available in Epic game stores and console platforms. Official news didn't come out until December 8, 2022-on the 15th anniversary of the studio, Playdead released a new picture, but beyond that, people knew nothing about the game-we didn't even know its name.

There is only one picture of Playdead's third game, and there may be another game to look forward to, and that is "Cocoon", which will be unveiled at Microsoft's game launch in June 2022. Judging from the trailer, this is an insect-themed adventure game with a unique design, produced by Jeppe Carlsen, the chief designer of Hell's Frontier and Inside.

There should be many puzzles around the sphere in "Cocoon". Looking back at the dispute over Playdead, it is not difficult to read a story of contradiction between ideal and reality: at first, only two employees of Playdead, namely Arnt Jensen and Jeppe Carlsen,Dino Patti, volunteered to join the company after seeing the promotional video of "Hell's Border" and became co-founders, mainly responsible for recruiting managers and game production talents. Dino Patti's excellent coordination skills allowed Arnt Jensen and Jeppe Carlsen to focus on designing games, and Arnt Jensen and Dino Patti used their early savings to support the initial development of Hell's Frontier. It can be said that the "Hell Border" is the result of the cooperation of three people.

Of course, like many cooperation and divisions in the world, such relationships are very fragile when they contradict and conflict with each other, and a "peaceful breakup" may be doomed. And it's a relatively good ending-we see a crueler story in "Paradise Disco."

Isn't life an illusion?

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