En Staffordshire-pub, en dårlig førstebil og en bestefar å vinne over

Solo developer Jack Somers, who works under the handle NoahsArkGames, has revealed Nothing Ever Happens Here, a slice-of-life sim set in Burntwood, a real town in southern Staffordshire just north of Birmingham. The game is set in 2011 and casts the player as an 18-year-old tasked with rebuilding their grandad's pub, The Bell End, after he loses his license to sell alcohol. The restoration runs room by room.

Nothing Ever Happens Here is heading to early access on Steam in 2027, with a demo planned for Steam Next Fest later this year. Somers is also running a Discord server for players who want to follow development directly.

The structure pulls from two unlikely reference points. The driving and exploration owe to My Summer Car, with the player's first car serving as the way out of the four walls of the pub. The social systems borrow from Grand Theft Auto 4. Somers is planning a friendship system that lets players go fishing with mates Ben and Harry down the canals, organize pool nights at The Bell End with Bradley, and field calls from grandad about brawls breaking out at the pub.

I see the Cousin Roman comparison Somers reaches for clearly in that last detail, and it gives the game a structural shape most slice-of-life sims avoid. The 2011 setting is not nostalgia for its own sake. Somers has said the narrative covers loneliness, isolation, the plight of the working class, British subcultures of the period, and coming of age, with redemption at its core. The grandad reads cold but wants the best for the player.

Parts of the game are loosely autobiographical. Somers has spoken about being visited by police at 17, getting kicked out of university, and running away from home more than once. None of those events appear directly in the game, but I think the trajectory they describe is what shapes the redemption arc he's building toward.

"In this game, your grandad is my real grandad, and he's trying to cheer you up after you've bought your first, but very crap, car."

— Jack Somers

Read also, Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth landed April 27, 2026, on PC and Nintendo Switch from Hyper Games and Kakehashi Games, a cozy successor to Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley.