Jumpship and Somerville, respectively
Almost one year to the day after Inside originally launched, Playdead co-founder Dino Patti has revealed his next venture. After a less-than-amicable departure from Playdead, Patti has helped start a new studio which is in the process of developing its first game.
That studio is named Jumpship, and that game is titled Somerville. Along with Patti, Jumpship’s other head is Chris Olsen, a film animator who has turned to game development. The company is headquartered in Guildford, England — not Denmark which is where Playdead is located.
As for Somerville, Jumpship describes it as “a sci-fi action adventure that chronicles the lives of key individuals in the wake of a global catostrophe.” Patti and Olsen came together and decided to produce this game sometime in 2016. Apart from that, the teaser trailer that’s embedded above is our only official look at Somerville.
However, turning to social media gives us a little bit more information. The Jumpship Twitter account (which hasn’t yet tweeted at time of writing) has a cover photo with the words “In neon sky our kin are lost, ’till future has returned to dust.” More substantial, the Somerville Tumblr has a handful of work-in-progress clips — like the two that are embedded below. The aesthetic is something of a cross between Inside and Kentucky Route Zero.
Anything that Patti works on will draw inevitable comparisons to Limbo and Inside. That’s just the way things go, especially considering the pedigree of those two games. The bar is high for Somerville. That being said, we know next to nothing about this project yet. If Patti goes the Playdead route, it’ll probably remain that way until release.
