Routine review: Running from robots

Lunar Software's sci-fi horror is all about tactile puzzles.

An easy comparison to make with Routine is Alien Isolation, due to its green-tinted, chunky technology, and invincible, free-roaming (ish) antagonist forces. While the actual timeline suggests Routine was in development early enough for some of those similarities to be coincidental rather than derivative, there’s no denying the aesthetic comparison to that era of spooky science fiction. Routine is slow, methodical, and creepier when it’s about what you can’t see than what’s staring you in the face. But where it really shines isn’t about the horror at all.

No point in screaming

Routine starts with you waking up in a small room in what appears to be a retro-flavored, futuristic resort built on the moon. You’re an engineer, and as soon as you stretch, gather your things, and open the door, it’s apparent something has gone horribly wrong. There’s no real indication of who you are, where you’ve been, or how involved you are or aren’t in the apparent abandonment and ruin of this space. But now it’s time to sniff out, well, anything. Are we trying to escape? Solve a problem? Figure out what happened? Nothing is clear, and Routine revels in its ambiguity.

While the goings-on and greater story do unravel over time, where Routine never compromises is how it expects you to get there. There is no hand-holding, no signposting, and minimal tracking for your goals. The closest thing you can get to something resembling how video games tend to communicate and guide your eyeballs is in following cables, and therein lies what makes Routine interesting. It’s extremely tactile. The entire language Routine speaks is in a grounded realism, despite its sci-fi and horror trimmings. If something needs your input, it’s something that makes practical, human sense. Terminals have interfaces you click on with a mouse cursor. Power boxes and doors have mechanisms with power supplies and cables. Devices you use have buttons, latches, ports, and displays. Everything has a function and you have to interact directly with those functions.

That thing must be heavy

The most clear and heavy-handed example is the game’s main gameplay gimmick, the Cosmonaut Assistance Tool, or CAT. This thing has the heft of a VHS video camera and the modularity of a desktop PC, and each relevant piece of it is interactive. You have to hold the device in front of you, power it on, fiddle with expansion slots to change functions, press a button to degauss if you’ve encountered too much interference, press a button to connect to wireless data points (to save or browse certain reference materials), and check the battery life. It’s a slow process befitting such a chunky device, and your sole line of defense against the giant, malfunctioning security droids roaming the halls.

Solving “puzzles” is largely about observing and deciphering your environment. You may need to use the CAT to expose fingerprints and deduce which order they go in based on the size and density of their residue to figure out security codes. You might need to find and deactivate malfunctioning power boxes. Sometimes you need to literally just… look down at your own ID card fastened to your chest and use the number on it. Certain details (or hiding from a threat) need you to not just crouch, but really push yourself down on the floor. Or you might need to crane your neck up taller than you stand normally. Or just peek around a corner. There’s a raw physicality to everything you need to do in Routine, which stands out due to its cold, unfeeling lack of video gamey framework. You have your small toolset, and then you have how the technology of this base and the objects within it operate, and that’s it. You don’t have a HUD, and your cursor doesn’t even manifest unless your line of sight is perfectly lined up with something you can interact with.

The pros and cons of realism

There’s an intensity to this level of authentic physicality that is easy to feel impressed with. It can, in the right moments, heighten your senses when it comes to being afraid or uneasy. It can also be novel to have to use your brain in ways you might not be accustomed to in a game like this. There are tradeoffs as well. Routine is a slow-moving game in nearly every way. You move slowly, the enemies (mostly) move slowly, the world around you moves slowly. There is no dopamine to be found in these parts, my neurodivergent comrades. If a slow burn is a source of discomfort for you, if having to repeat things while watching a scary, but laborious animation play out when you fail is a potential cause of frustration, then you will find no safety in this space.

I personally had to really lock in and turn This is My Job mode on several times to get me through what is a relatively short experience. Compared to something like Unbeatable which lasts a similar amount of time but is full of colors and music and magic and swear words, it felt like I discovered the ass-end of time travel and I did not enjoy that sensation! But that’s a matter of deliberate choice, and when I saw and understood what Routine is all about, I respected it. Routine’s pace and design absolutely nails that hopeless, plodding reality of being a human being having to rely on human tools and human language in a human space. Especially when something really, really bad is happening.

Routine stands out. It targets a specific aesthetic, a specific vibe, and a specific cadence, and it pulls out every stop to land on those targets. It does so with striking accuracy, making technology that feels real and of this world despite its fiction, simply due to the ways in which you interact with it and use it to solve problems and progress the story. It runs at a slow pace that won’t gel with everyone, and its lack of interest in guiding players is an observable filter as well. But those interested in the hardest of hard sci-fi, the challenge of powerlessness against ever-present threats, and the patience for environmental deduction have six or so hours jam-packed with all that stuff ready for them here. Routine has a niche appeal, but wears it like a badge of honor.

Routine is available now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. A Xbox Series X|S code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Review for
Routine
7
Pros

• Impressive sense of verisimilitude
• Tactile gameplay that marries design and gameplay effectively
• Spooky!

Cons

• Extremely slow pace
• Lots of repetition
• Nearly zero guidance, to the point of feeling like an accessibility barrier