Somnifuge is a solid puzzle-box horror game, one that takes after survival horror puzzle design, but leaves behind the combat. It doesn't do anything in particular especially well, but I think broadly speaking it does well at each thing it sets out to do.
There is a story here, but it's one that you are left to piece together yourself. [spoiler]From what I can gather, there are a few key pieces of information. For one, your entire game takes place in a simulation. The entire process of playing the game is, seemingly, trying your very damndest to get out of that simulation and being stopped by a vague overarching threat. This threat is two-fold, there being a sort of doctor character that seems to be (I'm really unsure about this) trying to stop you, and then a more obscure threat that is in cahoots with said doctor character (this being most clear from the ending where the both of them are sat together in the form of the final boss). There's also a lady who appears near the end that may also be a distinct character, but I am not quite certain about this.
For two, in the real world, there's this mysterious "gossamer signal" out in space (particularly in orbit around Jupiter, as later information will reveal) and there is some strange illness that has ravaged Earth's inhabitants. To what extent, I have no idea, but I'm not sure it's all that relevant the specificity of this. I like the way both of these bits of info are parceled out to you, being revealed in the planetarium section through a newspaper. That's, of course, pretty benign and just typical, but the fact of it floating specifically around Jupiter you can notice from just looking at the planet and seeing something floating around it. Or, maybe that's just Juno OR even just one of Jupiter's various satellites - but, this is proven to be true in the real ending anyways so whatever.
So, the story is in some way this: humanity discovered a signal from outer space and specifically found that it came from a satellite orbiting Jupiter. Somehow, the alien lifeform which broadcast this signal brought forth a plague to the planet Earth which ravaged our civilization. Finally, five astronauts were held hostage by this alien lifeform, one of whom being you, for some strange, unknown purpose. I suppose the fact of how the illness got on Earth can be chalked up to the idea that maybe there were several treks to this gossamer signal, and from one of the return trips we brought back this illness.
Whatever the case, it seems as if the alien lifeform's purpose is to experiment on the player and those four other astronauts. There's a book halfway through which talks about "Ontological Dissonance Reduction," which in short is the idea that the human psyche, when put into a simulation, finds "historical aesthetics and imagery" serves as "mental anchors," which is used vaguely to "gently guide the psyche into domains more closely aligned with our collective memory and shared cultural heritage." Who "our" is in this snippet is ultimately unclear, but from the overall book's message suggests that it was not necessarily written by a fellow human.
Assuming it is the alien lifeform that wrote this, you can therefore assume the reason your imagined surroundings is an older looking mansion area comes down to the fact that it was a comfortable location. The puzzles and all are designed to try and guide you, the player, towards a specific conclusion, my belief being that the ending most players will get is the one the alien lifeform has ultimately set up for you.
The real ending, however, is likely one that only came to be through one of your fellow captive's doing. To cut things short, I'll say that presumably some of the captives came around to the alien and others didn't. I don't really have any concrete evidence of this other than a feeling and the description above about believing one of the main antagonists to be a fellow astronaut. Most concretely, though, I can talk about one Dr. F, who seemed to be the person leaving behind a lot of the clues you end up finding. There is also one Elena S., who I'm unsure about whether this is you, or one of the antagonists, but setting that aside, Dr. F is likely the person who leaves you the game-wide clues you need for the second ending, which is probably the coolest puzzle in the game.[/spoiler]
The puzzles themselves are often more designed from a "noticing" perspective, which is to say you are not often actually solving puzzles so much as you are noticing bits of information and then applying them when relevant. On occasion, there is actually something to solve, but I would not say this is a difficult game to puzzle through in the slightest. Honestly, the hardest puzzle for me was the lamplight puzzle near the end in the ocean, and that's simply because I've always been bad at (read: refuse to actually think about and thus actually solve) those kinds of puzzles. Nevertheless, I don't actually dislike these kinds of puzzles and for this game, I think it works well enough.
[spoiler]But, to speak to that game-wide puzzle, you'll find these random phrases written all over the place, such as "lost way" and "lost key" and so on and so forth. Should you take note of all of these, you may notice at the end after you've beaten the boss that there are several blocks to shoot with those words on them. Doing so gives you the second ending, the one I consider to be the real one. And, to tell you the truth, I did not actually solve this puzzle. Quite frankly, I was rather frustrated with the game by the end thanks to TWO bugs that disallowed my progression in the section where you must hunt out five TVs to shoot. I don't hold these bugs against the game, but it did put a severe damper on my enjoyment of the game in the moment.
Anyways...
The second ending reveals you waking up on this strange space craft orbiting Jupiter and, more important, it's been completely covered in, surrounded by the strange alien lifeform, the "gossamer signal," as it were. The alien lifeform takes note of you and looks at you through the front window of the space craft and you both seem to acknowledge each other for a moment, but you decide to hit a button that activates a self-destruct sequence, presumably being the ultimate goal of this space craft before they were accosted by and held hostage by the alien lifeform, which evidently worked its way into the space craft and began to affect the stasis that each person was held in.[/spoiler]
That's what I've taken from Somnifuge, ultimately, and I would say its story is its main highlight. As I said, the puzzles are not greatly interesting, but they're certainly enjoyable enough. The horror of the game is generally fine, mostly excelling in its atmosphere, but some parts of the game were legitimately scary. In particular, the hospital section over halfway through was quite stressful at first. Once you realize its great simplicity, the fear begins to go away, but its certainly effective enough for a majority of its runtime.
Overall, Somnifuge is an enjoyable experience that I hope to see more people find out about and check out. Games like this don't deserve to fall into obscurity, so I hope to see more reviews on this game in the coming years.
