Routine

Routine (stylized in caps as ROUTINE) is a first person (light-)survival horror game first announced all the way back in 2012 at Gamescom. The project disappeared into development hell until finally resurfacing a decade later to the surprise of those who had been aware of the game (which hadn't included me). The wait probably wasn't worth it and even without it, Routine hasn't much meat to it. The game released few days before my latest Game Pass month was up -- which was plenty of time to beat, and 100%, the around 7-hour experience.

Visually impressive small scale horror

Routine takes place on the Moon. You appear to have been in a regular quarantine after arriving to the lunar base and maybe have been hit by amnesia during it as well. Shit appears to have hit the fan: there are no people left alive and hostile robots roam the hallways.

Gameplay and visuals have similarities with Alien: Isolation; Routine too has retrofuturistic design. The game is set in (alternate) 1999 but the lunar base was built way before it. Like in Isolation -- and maybe even more so in Routine -- scenery and environmental pieces look amazingly realistic. Particularly, it's the worn, painted surfaces like in Isolation's tram cars. And your CAT (Cosmonaut Assistant Tool) looks so very tangible when you bring it up to fiddle with.

At release, Routine didn't have options to turn off film grain nor chromatic aberration. While the filters may appeal to someone, I find them to just add fuzziness to the visual fidelity. Fortunately, the usual Unreal Engine .ini edits/additions did seem to do the trick again and now, after quicky-released patches, you don't even need those anymore to remove the filters.

I noticed that some hallways were clearly done by first making one side and then mirroring it for the other wall. That's all fine but they should have edited the flipped texts after the fact. There were few minor typos in few terminal texts as well and I think one of base's past personnel, Maria Ivanov, whom I assume to be a woman and Russian, should have an a at the end of her last name for those combined details.

The game's darkness makes you wish for a flashlight and your suit later turns out to have one -- except you have no manual control over it. And it comes on automatically only when crawling in dark vents.

Casual clipping

I'm also not sure how much the developers thought of the Moon's 0.166 g gravity. You can't jump nor carry objects, and nothing gets knocked down or falls (except maybe sparks when using the CAT on an electrical thingy), so you can't properly observe it. The robots do take heavy-ass sounding steps but that could be just how they move. I did, however, feel that you take slightly longer strides while running outside, as if the lack of atmosphere somehow enabled the lower gravity.

The first part of Routine was all right but all that scary. Figuring out what needed to be done wasn't too challenging. The CAT can stun the robots for you to run away and hide. And you don't even need the CAT unless the robot happens to be in your way. The CAT's battery lasts for only three shots but there are fresh batteries everywhere and they go into the tool without any further action required beyond hitting the pickup key. And that's about the length Routine gets into the survival part of survival horror.

Lost on a lunar base

My enjoyment got diminished in the second part. The robots are left behind and instead you, eventually, get an unkillable monster to chase after you. The monster is actually creepy, mostly for how tall it is compared to you. It managed to properly scare me at least twice. Notes say that it's supposed to be only visible via the CAT but then it does appear often enough even without the tool. I thought it was glitching out but then thinking of it again, I guess it was intended to make sure you don't completely miss how it looks.

I read later that you can stun the monster, too, when firing at its eyes. I did try to shoot at the monster from a safe hallway to see if it would run away -- which it didn't. I don't know if it got stunned, although it did at least yelp.

The second area became frustrating -- even before the monster appeared to mess with me. It was very difficult to form a mental map of it. It might be a good idea to draw an actual map yourself: where to find the terminals to route power and where all the doors are.

There's an annoying puzzle (before the monster) that requires you to find hidden symbols that show up only when viewed via the CAT. You do get photograph hints where they are but I just couldn't find one of them on my own. Like Amnesia: The Bunker, Routines allows the guessing of codes but randomizes them for each playthrough. However, unlike in The Bunker, there's no need to savescum the discovery of a code.

Routine's ending is more sensical than Observation's but the feeling it left me with was very similar: unsatisfying. The game didn't call for an emotional investment and was just whatever in the end. The highlight of Routine was the way too brief interaction with a sympathetic little robot, IC.

And why did they have the definition of 'routine' on display in the base like an art installation? I suppose art pretty much covers it but it seemed so random.