Dino Patti, the co-founder of Playdead (Inside, Limbo), has joined forces with animator and artist Chris Olsen to start a brand new studio called Jumpship. This is a new indie game studio based in the UK, and Jumpship is already hard at work developing a game called Somerville that Olsen has been working on for a long time. Check out the beautiful and haunting teaser trailer above.
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According to Gematsu, the team over at Jumpship is currently seeking to expand in order to bring Somerville to fruition. They’re currently looking for a gameplay designer, generalist programmer, character controller programmer, and character animator. The job listings indicate that Jumpship will soon be a mid-sized indie studio, and apparently they have a decent budget to work with. Somerville for its part looks like it’s already coming together really nicely. If this moving painting aesthetic can be maintained, I’ll definitely bee keeping my eye on this project.
As mentioned, Somerville began its life as a side proejct for Olsen back in 2014. According to Gematsu, by 2016 he had built a proof of concept trailer, playable prototype, and had managed to attract a decent online following from documenting his development process and sharing it witht he community. At the moment we don’t have any solid story details about the game itself or the characters with whom we’ll be interacting, but you can follow Olsen on Twitter where he occasionally teases the game by sharing short gifs showing random characters or enemies in action.
All of the concept art, the trailer, and Olsen’s gifs have a distinctly “Playdead” vibe to them. If you’ve played Limbo or Inside, then you’ll get a very warm, fuzzy, familiar feeling while watching that teaser trailer. Apart from being visually stunning, Playdead’s offerings have been emotionally compelling stories as well, with their own very unique twists. Somerville willbe no different, we assume. Stay tuned for more info.
