The newly-released surreal puzzle/adventure game Somerville is now available for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and the Xbox Game Pass. It’s a short, 4- to 6-hour run through a devastated England, in the immediate aftermath of a particularly strange alien invasion.
While Somerville is a short game, it’s got some well-hidden and high-value achievements, almost none of which are linked to simple completion milestones. For achievement hunters, that makes Somerville a hot pick for easy points.
Here’s how to get all the achievements for Somerville.
How to Get 100% Completion on Somerville
While Somerville doesn’t have clearly labeled chapter breaks, or indeed any official numbering for its chapters at all, it does have a very robust chapter select feature that’s gradually unlocked as you play through the game.
Like A Plague Tale: Requiem, this means that getting any achievements you’ve missed is as easy as selecting the relevant sub-chapter after the closing credits. Each of the chapters is short enough that, while you may have to replay a puzzle or two, you’re no more than a couple of minutes away from any specific point in the game.
As such, Somerville is a pretty easy 1,000 Gamerscore or 100% game on Steam, if that’s your sort of thing.
Naturally, this discussion can’t be done without massive, borderline ridiculous spoilers for the entirety of Somerville. Clear it first before you go back to clean up what you missed.
World’s best dad
In Chapter 2-1, play through the tutorial as your character’s son. After you wakes up, before you do anything else, go into the kitchen.
Clean up after yourself here, to to speak, by closing the drawers and shutting the window. The achievement should fire shortly afterward.
Weary traveler
In Chapter 4-6, open the fence ahead of you and keep moving forward until you reach the top of the hill. If you interact with the nearby bench, your character will take a seat. Hang out there for a while until the achievement fires.
“Here, boy…”
This is a little weird. At the start of Chapter 5-1, keep moving left, through the abandoned cars on the highway, until you reach the oversized sign. Drop down into the water and go to the other side, although your dog won’t follow you.
When you get a few steps away from the water, you’ll hear the dog bark again, but softly. Turn around and go back the way you came. Your dog will have run off, but at least you’ll get an achievement.
Stuck on the john
In Chapter 5, as you’re traveling through the campsite, you’ll pass several unlocked porta-johns, including one that you’re at least strongly encouraged to use to dodge the aliens’ searchlight (below).
Going inside any of the available porta-johns, closing the door behind you, and staying put for a while will unlock this achievement. It takes roughly 60 seconds of inactivity.
While you’ll almost certainly get it when you’re using the john to hide, which makes this achievement the next best thing to unavoidable, you can pick up Stuck on the john almost immediately upon entering the campsite, in the first porta-john you find along the path.
Kind of Blue
The description of this achievement is a little misleading. You have to do it before you reach the concert stage in Chapter 5-6, rather than finding some arcane method of charging the stage lights from the catwalk. There’s even a sort of red herring in 5-6, as you can find a couple of different ways to at least look like you’re charging the stage lights via the camera feed.
Instead, you unlock Kind of Blue in Chapter 5-5. After you’ve used the strand of lights to melt the debris above the venue’s entrance, cross the rigging to the distant ledge and climb the ladder. Throw the switch to restore power to the lights above and below you, but before you leave, hold LT while holding the switch to charge every light in the venue simultaneously. This unlocks the achievement.
First contact
In Chapters 3 through 10, you can take occasional detours in order to find and often free some friendly alien drones. They’ll often frolic around near you, and are used at one point to solve a puzzle, but are generally just part of the scenery.
If you manage to find all 10 hidden encounters with the drones, in any order and over the course of one or more runs through the game, it triggers First contact. The colors flashing on the drones are also a very subtle clue as to how to get Somerville‘s fourth and final ending (below). Try to keep some notes about the colors they’re flashing as you find them.
There’s almost always some clue that a drone is nearby. It might be the particular “conversation” sound they make, a shower of sparks coming from nowhere, or some flashing lights.
The secret drone events are found in the following stages. These descriptions are given as if you’re going straight into the stage from the chapter select menu.
3-3: Hop the fence to your left, then go underneath the fallen tree. In the ravine, the drones following you will bump against the bottom of a round hay bale (below). Go push it forward so the drones can reach and melt some of the alien debris in the background.
4-4: Move forward until you hear the drones’ “conversation” noise. It’ll be faint.
At this point, you can duck under a fallen tree in the background (below, middle) to walk into the middle of some kind of drone field meeting. Go say hello.
5-2: Look in the background for a red car with its taillights on and a dangerously sparking trunk. Open the trunk to free the drone.
5-4: As you pass the two parked trucks, you should spot a drone in the background on the other side of a crowd barrier, circling a person-shaped standee (below). Move the wooden pallet next to the barrier so the drone can follow you around for a bit.
5-6: After you slide down the side of the tent to the ground, open the door on the shaking porta-john to your left.
6-4: Use your flare to melt the debris off the back wall, then petrify the liquified debris so you can reach the other side of the pool. Climb the ladder and move further down the mine shaft.
When the perspective switches, go into the open doorway in the background (below) and keep moving left to flush out a hidden drone.
6-7: Pick up a flare and use it to melt the alien debris above you. This gradually raises the water level in the tunnel so you can ascend, but watch out for the deadfall found roughly halfway up the shaft. You have to trigger it, then immediately swim under the nearby ledge and hug the corner until the last of the rocks and wood falls past you.
At the top of the shaft, keep melting the debris for as long as possible.
At this point, get out of the water and petrify it (above) so you can reach the tunnel on the right. If you hug the back wall, you’ll slide through a narrow gap that’s difficult to see and reach a hidden cavern with two drones.
6-8: After you solve the minecart puzzle and raise the gate, proceed through it. Before you climb the metal ladder, go around the boulder next to it (below) to reach the last part of the tunnel, where you’ll find another couple of drones.
9-1: In the refugee center, follow the path until you reach the memorial wall and follow it towards the back of the building. It’s very easy to overlook, but there’s a trolley on the left (brightened, below) that, even in your weakened state, you can grab and move to the side.
This reveals the door to a storage room. Interact with the moving box on the floor to find and free a stray drone.
10-1: As you’re exploring the city with your wife and son, keep your eyes open for a police car with blinking dome lights. Next to it, half-hidden by shadow, there’s a shop door blocked by alien debris.
Use your son’s flashlight to melt it away, then open the door to find the last drone poking around inside.
Resignation
In Chapter 13-3, use one of the flares to dissolve the back wall of the cavern. When you reach the small island in the debris field that features a couch and a replica of your wife on it, sit down next to her and wait until the screen fades out.
This is effectively a non-standard death scene, and automatically sends you back to the crate of flares to start over.
(It’s also occasionally bugged, in that you can do this and end up falling through the stage floor instead. If that happens, or if the camera flips out on your way here, you can just restart from the last checkpoint and you’ll end up back at the chest full of flares.)
You can trigger a similar sequence at the couch at the start of the highway sequence in 13-4, if you sit on the couch after your son drops the lamp. I can’t confirm if this will also unlock Resignation.
Resignation Reprise
This is the first of 4 achievements that are linked to the final sequence of the game, which determines which of Somerville‘s 4 endings you receive. Once you’ve gotten one, you can go back to Chapter 14-1 via the chapter select and do something different to unlock all the others.
In Chapter 14-1, you’re asked to play what’s essentially a call-and-response memory game. Your LT power corresponds to Blue; your RT power is Red; and holding both triggers at once is, naturally, Purple.
To get the easiest ending, follow the sequence of colors exactly as it’s displayed by the obelisks in front of you, up until your house rises from the chasm ahead.
At this point, break ranks with the people around you, then walk forward and enter the house. The credits will roll, and technically, you’ve beaten the game. Sort of. Maybe.
In my experimentation with this, the house rising from the chasm appears to be Somerville‘s consolation prize. Most of the other endings require longer button sequences or for you to deliberately break the pattern; if you fail an attempt at doing the latter, the game will stick you with Resignation Reprise instead.
War of the worlds
In Chapter 14-1, join hands with the line of people, but instead of following the call-and-response game, simply hold down both triggers until the central obelisk explodes. Welcome to Earth.
Family First
In Chapter 14-1, during the call-and-response game, input the following sequences:
- Blue, Red, Blue
- Blue, Blue, Red
- Blue, Blue, Blue
In practice, you may have to input these a couple of times before you hit the right trigger. In my most recent run, I put in Blue, Red, Blue twice, which triggered the obelisks to flash Blue, Blue, Red. I hit that, then on the next cycle, put in Blue, Blue, Blue.
If you’re successful, this sequence triggers the appearance of a circular viewscreen ahead of you, much like the ones that appeared throughout Chapter 13.
Break ranks with the people around you, walk forward, and use the colored inputs on the sides of the viewscreen to destroy it, just as you had with the other screens at the end of Chapter 13.
Understanding
The final ending of Somerville is also the hardest to get, because the clues are ridiculously hard to spot. As noted above under First contact, every optional alien drone encounter in Somerville features the drones glowing in a set sequence, which is easy to write off as simple set dressing in a game that’s as surreal as this one.
That sequence, however, is the actual clue to getting the final achievement in the game. In order to unlock Understanding, you need to find all the drone encounters and write down the sequence of flashing lights.
You also seem to only have one shot at this. If you screw up and miss an input at any time, you have to either start over or accept another ending.
To unlock Understanding, input the following sequence:
- Blue, Red, Blue
- Blue, Blue, Blue, Purple, Purple, Purple
- Blue, Blue, Blue, Red, Purple, Purple
- Blue, Blue, Blue, Red, Purple, Purple, Red, Red, Red
If you’re getting the inputs right, you should start getting longer, more intricate “responses” from the obelisks. Ignore them.
You’ll know that you’ve succeeded here if all three obelisks crumble to the ground after you finish the fourth full response.
At this point, walk forward, then into the light. Wonder where your dog is. Angrily tweet at Chris Olsen about where the dog is. Make sure to inform @CanYouPetTheDog of this treachery. Watch the credits.
