Indie Game of the Week 450: Routine

If there's a surprising recurring theme in my IGotW subjects for 2025, beyond all the exploraction fare (since that's hardly surprising for me), it's first-person adventure games set in space that often revolve around engineering and software troubleshooting and potentially a touch of suspenseful horror: The Station, Deliver Us the Moon, and Return to Grace all being examples I covered earlier this year. To suddenly see another one pop up on the "recently added" queue on Game Pass—a service I'll be enjoying for just a few more days and potentially never again afterwards—felt like kismet for my final IGotW entry for 2025. The plot of Routine has you, a nameless debugger, visit a lunar colony to re-establish its power and communications network after a mysterious blackout only to arrive to find the colony completely devoid of life. Barring, that is, a series of "Type-05" androids that skulk around in the shadows ready to throttle any human interlopers at a moment's notice and the automated station-wide security AI controlling them.

It's a familiar set-up for the sci-fi/horror hybrid genre, though a combination of factors does set it apart from similar experiments in the past: for one, there's a graphical fidelity to the rundown station that gives it a truly lived-in feel while also resembling a place outside of time due to some anachronistic design choices and a film grain vignette that is on by default—like this was a facility we potentially could've built in the '80s or '90s (similar to how a lot of Prey's (2017) architecture felt distinctly 1970s, or how the Wolfenstein II Nazi moonbase was '60s inspired). Second, you're not some Gordon Freeman or Isaac Clarke type of science nerd that suddenly becomes a super-soldier when the chips are down: all you have is a weak zappy gizmo meant for diagnostics work but can be used as a shock gun in a pinch, provided it has enough charge left in its battery (and you'll only ever have three shots at most so you better hit that android's power core dead on); hiding and waiting is usually going to be your best bet against these stubborn synthetic stalkers.

They're not exactly rolling out the red carpet for me here but then they are all dead, or eaten, or something.

Beyond that, usual survivor horror adventure game rules apply. You'll find a new area, be given a list of tasks, find creative ways to resolve those tasks once the direct easy option is taken off the table, and then get a little closer to completing your mission on this frequently haunted rock we call a satellite. One twist is that you can't actually access your PDA directly: you need to tap into terminals and projectors connected to a wireless network, at which point you can review your tasks, any passcodes you may have gleaned, video files you downloaded, and (of course) save the game. This is all done in real-time, so if there's patrolling clankers nearby it's prudent to wrap up your business quickly or wait until you're in an enemy-free zone before reacquainting yourself with important details. It's very much the type of game that isn't going to hold your hand with HUD elements like arrows pointing to your destination, any maps that you can take with you, or a little message at the top of the screen detailing your current mission parameters. That extra level of immersion is certainly valuable to some, especially in a thematic genre where immersion counts for a lot, but you might find yourself lost if you aren't paying attention to notes and other clues. Sneaking into a CCTV control area to scope a locked office to find the password to open it written on the wall, for example, is the sort of indirect reconnaissance puzzle you could be faced with on occasion.

The part of the game where you're just hiding from monsters is pretty par for the course, though, where the androids are very receptive to any visual and audio confirmation of your presence and will pursue you until you find a spot to hide or temporarily disable them. They'll investigate any loud noises as well regardless of their source, and you learn early on that there's a quirk to how they operate in that the malignant AI can only operate one of these units per area at a time: you'll find yourself walking past inert robots praying they won't suddenly wake up and come after you. The AI also controls doors and cameras, giving you a sinking feeling it knows exactly where you are and what you're there to do at all times, even if there are no robots presently on your tail. I can't fault the game's sense of atmosphere but I do find myself tiring quickly of stealth survival games these days, especially those which involve a whole lot of waiting around for enemy patrols to pass by so you can keep making progress—I failed to complete the equally attractive and glacially-paced Maid of Sker (IGotW #443) for similar reasons. With the various tricks up the enemy's polycarbonate sleeves it will at least keep you guessing as you navigate these danger zones but it's still so much sitting in a dark corner waiting until you can get back to the part you were enjoying: figuring out how to solve the next progression puzzle using a combination of wits and improvisation.

Hiding? Moi? Nah, there's probably a super necessary data disk or something down here. Glad those things aren't programmed to crouch.

At least, that's all the case for the first half of the game. The second relies more on power distribution puzzles—say, you have enough juice to open Door 1 or Door 2 but not both simultaneously—and robots become the least of your worries. Routine starts getting much more... psychological, at that point. Along the lines of "something is trying to communicate to us and a text message ain't gonna cut it" akin to the movie Annihilation (which I want to say that Routine owes a debt to for its "eldritch brass" sound design alone) or another recent trippy spacebound horror game, Signalis. This half is mildly more engaging than the first because the peril's greater and the plot is quickly thickening into some sort of primordial moon goop but might otherwise be too little too late if you're already getting fed up of being led around on a merry goose chase while the proverbial poultry farmers try to break your neck for Christmas dinner (sorry for the labored analogy; festive stuff's on the brain lately as you might expect). So, yes, Routine has plenty going for it as a stealthy survival horror that slowly ratchets up the unnerving vibes with some very nice UE5 graphics and eerie sound design, all couched in a more detached approach to giving you the clues to overcome its roadblocks. Yet it's nothing I haven't seen before, several times this year even. I appreciate that a lot more thought and effort went into building this setting and its command of atmosphere is greater than a lot of reaction-ready horror games that get churned out by the developer-to-YouTuber jumpscare pipeline but I still found its familiar format a little rote. Might be why I play fewer survival horror games these days. Or because I'm a wuss. Happily, both can apply.

(If you wanted a taste of what Routine is dishing out I took the liberty of uploading a (very) small gameplay demo over hyeah.)

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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