Somewhere's fragments continue to mystify and delight
So great!
Oleomingus's work is some of my favourite stuff to gawp at. For several years, they've been working on Somewhere, a surreal first-person metafictional doodad about the search for a missing city, inspired partially by the winding tales and worlds of Borges and Calvino. As Oleomingus have released prototypes and short spin-offs, Somewhere has gone from stealth to story to... I increasingly suspect that it's a big trick, that Somewhere is not a game but all of these pieces together, combined with all their dev blogs, their screenshots, and their short stories.
So a new video of nosetowers is as much as the game as recent screenshots of giant lightbulbs as the last playable bit they released. All are Somewhere and all are great.
This? Great:
And these screenshots from February:
And this toothpaste bog:
Heck, this short story and accompanying landscapes too:
Not to mention this landscape:
And this head:
Follow their dev blog; it is great. A steady stream of wonderful things. Still no word on when Somewhere will be released (if any such game exists!) but Oleomingus have received a grant from the India Foundation for the Arts.
"With the generous support of the grant, we will be able to craft stories of much greater intricacy, create stranger spaces to explore and continue to make our work freely available to all," they say. Splendid.
Arguably every game is made up of everything you see of it, trailers and screenshots and what your mate tells you all becoming part of your experience, but Somewhere seems to intentionally push that even more in such a pleasant way.