The developers at Jumpship, the studio behind the upcoming Somerville, said the game will be departing from any "traditional game loop." The team is trying to avoid any kind of repetition in the experience.
Somerville seems to be a rather special case for studio founder and project director Chris Olsen, as the game took a whole eight years to develop and was constantly evolving. As reported in the recent issue of Edge (via Multiplayer), the title has made a structural change from its 2D mechanics and gotten rid of jumping as a fundamental element of gameplay. The reason for this was that Olsen "didn't want it to be a platformer." He tried to avoid making close comparisons with his previous games.
What the team tried to achieve above all was the elimination of repetition in Somerville's gameplay so that you never know what lies ahead. Whereas most games are centered around a core conceit, Jumpship attempted to deliver a constant sense of helplessness and to force players to adapt quickly to the "hunting strategies" of the aliens.
The story will focus on the individual members of a family who try to survive in a hostile world after an alien invasion by moving from shelter to shelter. Somerville's primary source of inspiration is Eric Chahi's Another World — the classic game praised for its innovative use of cinematic effects. However, Jumpship's greatest effort was to create a truly unique script that won't borrow elements from other notable works. Particularly, this led to the creation of Sediment, a living alien entity and material that will be crucial to the game's mechanics on account of its unique shifting properties.
Somerville is going to launch this year, but has no fixed date at present. The game will be coming to PC and Xbox Series X|S. The game will be available on Game Pass from day one.