Review – ROUTINE – Gamerview

There was a time and a place when horror games didn’t affect me at all. It was the Justine DLC, from Amnesia, that showed me that I had limits. The feeling of anxiety that that type of experience gave me was no longer satisfactory. That certainty that the monster is close, but you can’t predict where. I pushed that limit with Alien Isolation, believing that time would grant me more courage. I made a huge mistake and abandoned one of the most praised titles of its generation. Today was my shock therapy.

The Lunar Software title had been in development for the past thirteen years. Initially, Routine would run on Unreal Engine 3, then the project was migrated to Unreal Engine 4, then restarted from scratch, and then migrated to Unreal Engine 5. The end result is a relatively short but unforgettable horror experience, an immersive journey that was worth the long wait.

The Moon is haunted

With every step through the extremely dark corridors of this game, I went with my heart in my hand. The anticipation of the attack was my biggest enemy. The protagonist’s slow step only reinforced the feeling of walking on tiptoe, so as not to be uncomfortable in an environment where Man does not belong. The run button was not a sensible option most of the time and I died on at least two occasions precisely because I ran into an unavoidable situation.

Routine isn’t the kind of game that torments the player with an almost endless succession of grotesque enemies thrown at you, like Dead Space. Nor is it a game that relies on easy scares, on threats appearing suddenly for free. There was only one moment of this kind in my journey and I understood that, in fact, it was a design resource to draw my attention to an object that I had not noticed and that would be essential to advance the plot.

Here we control a software engineer, hastily called to the Union Plaza lunar station to fix a problem in the security system. In the tradition of Isaac Clarke or Ellen Ripley, we are the wrong person at the right time. Except that our character never grows up to face the horrors that await him. We begin our torment as a fragile, defenseless and scared being, and we reach the end in that same condition, with our psyche shattered by the traumas suffered.

There is a turning point in the plot of Routine, but it is not related to the protagonist. To say more would be to enter the swampy terrain of spoilers. Suffice it to say that all of Lunar Software’s marketing is focused solely on the first third of the game. What could seem like another manifesto against machines and AIs rebelling against their creators takes on the contours of cosmic horror and the tension is raised to the nth degree with a new type of enemy.

CAT: Don’t leave home without it

Lunar Software’s great merit is building a title that seeks at all times to pull the player into its retro-futuristic universe. There is no user interface in Routine, with markers, life bar or ammo. Every mechanical part of the title is concentrated in its Cosmonaut Assistance Tool (CAT). This weapon-shaped tool will be your interface with the world, in a very tactile and very natural way.

The save menu, tasks and other information are accessible only using CAT and only at specific access points. Everything is projected on the wall interactively, so it is common to see the relief of objects behind the interface.

The CAT also gains new features and starts to function as a type of visual sensor so that the player can see what the human eye is not capable of. To change between different modes of use, you literally have to look at the CAT and turn levers or buttons. This implementation adds an extra layer of credibility to this world, increases immersion and increases tension, since Routine does not pause at any time and certain situations will require the player to switch modes in seconds to escape certain death.

Unfortunately, Lunar Software insists at all times on not holding the player’s hand for anything and it can take a considerable amount of time to correctly understand its mechanics. Still, perseverance and extreme attention to found notes, audio diaries and messages on terminals help the player find his way. In this sense, Routine is not as complicated as a , but players accustomed to solving their problems quickly or who prefer a more linear horror experience may be frustrated.

The core of Routine’s gameplay is solving very intelligent puzzles, which hark back to the beginnings of Resident Evil. This can involve ultraviolet vision of clues and even making a chemical compound by following instructions.

There may be an excess of small mechanics that end up being abandoned at the barbecue. Standing up on tiptoe was useful only once, as was bending down completely to reach something under a table. The action of manually restarting a server also happens in a single moment in the plot. Other features are very useful in a certain part of the game and forgotten soon after.

There is at least one small bug in the game, where it is not possible to interact with clearly interactive elements in the scene, but I managed to solve this problem by targeting the object once with the CAT. A second bug in Routine could just be an inconsistency or a failure on my part to understand how a particular enemy works. Reacting against this enemy sometimes removed him “permanently”, sometimes paralyzed him for a very short period of time. Obviously, the second result happening unexpectedly caused me some deaths.

ROUTINE imprisons with flowers and horrors

The audio in Routine is another pillar that supports the uncomfortable feeling of being physically in this territory. The sound direction works very well with the positioning of the origin of the sounds and it is possible to know (in some moments) when the enemy is approaching. This feature was vital for me to notice that I was not safe in an area that I thought was protected and where I had stopped to decipher a puzzle.

It’s a cat and mouse game that alternates moments of tension and chase with moments of detailed exploration of each environment, with the aggravating factor that it is quite difficult to differentiate the two moments. I would dare say that there is no 100% safe scenario in Routine, but that could be my nerves kicking in.

In the midst of this psychological torture experiment, Lunar Software injects a complex plot that mixes almost inexplicable, not to say lysergic, situations involving flowers. There is an underlying story asking to flourish. The confusing glimpses of this much larger whole become fuel in the great pyre of insanity that approaches the protagonist. The game’s conclusion itself would be something I couldn’t explain in rational terms, but I can assure you it’s satisfying.

Routine is a title that did not come to shed light on its plot, but to pull the player towards the lunar darkness and never let go. May the next Lunar Software game take as long as necessary to reach the same level of quality.