As a lover of puzzle games, what can elevate my puzzle-solving experience more than having horrifying monsters breathing down my neck and ready to snap said neck if I fail to solve their puzzle in time? I love these types of games that keep me on edge for hours on end, so Routine is exactly the type of aesthetically pleasing and brutally tense kinds of horror experience I’m always on the lookout for. And with a deeply cool 80’s-tech lunar setting and the beginnings of a story that has me interested in seeing more, I’m willing to overlook some of the things I was less impressed by during the roughly 90-minute demo, like the fact that the monsters searching for me were about as bright as the desks I hid behind and underneath. It remains to be seen if the story will pay off as much as its promising setting and compelling vibe might imply, but I’ll definitely be diving deeper in the future to see how it shakes out.
Routine is one of those horror games where you’re forced to run around solving little puzzles while absolutely horrifying monsters stalk the halls, ready to kill you on sight if you fail to avoid their notice – you know, in the same vein as something like Alien: Isolation or My Friendly Neighborhood. That comes with all the same pros and cons as its genre peers, where you have these really tense moments as you manage to solve a puzzle and rush through a door just before the bad guy you can’t possibly hope to kill catches up with you. But you then also have plenty of instances where you’re stuck in a room waiting for the dumb bad guy to turn around and walk away, leading to lots of moments where the tension sours into a monotonous waiting game. I tend to really enjoy these kinds of protracted hide and seek sequences, even if they do occasionally involve a bit of waiting, so this was right up my alley.
In this particular case, I found myself on a moon base that had been taken over by killer humanoid robots, whose lidless, unblinking eyes searched for me as I repaired various broken electrical systems and tried to get through each area unnoticed. The ambience of this dilapidated lunar base with an ‘80’s tech aesthetic really worked for me, clearly drawing inspiration from fellow retro-tech science fiction worlds like Alien. But Routine also brings with it a unique sense of humor, with silly arcade games to play in between sweat-inducing horror sequences and cheeky, non-murderous robot helpers to find along the way.
This is one of the biggest ways in which Routine sets itself apart, as its immaculately creepy vibes, unique retro aesthetic, and tongue-in-cheek jokes in between bouts of utter terror, all coalesce in a way I haven’t seen before. I didn’t get a very strong sense of whether or not the story will deliver something worth all the stress and jump scares along the way, but hopefully all this neat worldbuilding will translate into something as awesome as the setting. With some solid environmental storytelling and hints at some kind of mysterious viral disease at work, it has certainly piqued my curiosity.
The areas I explored ranged from= fairly unremarkable metallic hallways filled with busted droids and signs of something catastrophic having happened recently to really neat areas like an abandoned arcade with janky retro games to play and a shopping mall littered with debris. And, of course, since the whole thing takes place on a base on the moon, they take every opportunity to give you a nice view of the beautiful majesty of good ol’ Selene. Gotta love that. I’m a tad skeptical that they can manage to keep things interesting when you’re stranded on a fairly generic space station on a barren rock in outer space, but hey, so far so good.
Although much of the demo I played featured some fairly by-the-numbers puzzles, like finding codes around the world to enter into a keypad to unlock a door, it also had some neat mechanics built around the C.A.T device you’re given early in the story. This tool is basically just a handheld camcorder that can also do things like fire an electrical bolt at targets in your path. What’s cool, though, is that it evolved as I progressed, like when I unlocked an ultraviolet mode called the Ultraview Module that allowed me to see trace substances like bloodstains that helped me solve some of the space station’s more unintuitive riddles. I only unlocked two modes in my time with it, but it’s clear that upgrading this bad boy is going to be the primary way in which you power up, and so far I like that idea quite a bit. It’ll be interesting to see what clever new uses they find for it.
While you upgrade your C.A.T., read snippets of lore around the space station, and solve puzzles, you’ll find yourself almost constantly hunted by extremely violent robots that chase after you on sight with intent to kill. Naturally, that makes even the most simple brain teasers that much more stressful, as you spend every other second double-checking over your shoulder, or wincing when you hear a robotic sound come from somewhere nearby. It’s not exactly an original premise, but it’s certainly the classic type of horror gameplay I’ve come to know and love over the years – and something we could definitely use more of.
One thing that was a bit disappointing, at least during my extremely early time with the story, is just how easy it was to outsmart the fairly dim robots hunting for me, to the point where I never actually was killed during my time playing. They make a ton of noise as they march around electronically, give up the chase as soon as you start running away since they can’t hope to compete with your speed, and don’t do a very thorough job searching for you if you’re hidden in an obvious corner they haven’t bothered exploring yet. What’s more, one of the abilities you unlock for your C.A.T. early on, is a mode where you can tase the robots chasing you, shorting them out for a second or two to buy valuable time you need to get away, as if it weren’t already easy enough as-is. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still as intimidating as hell – the robotic shrieks they make every once in a while made my skin crawl, and the few times where they were able to get close without me noticing sent me screaming in the opposite direction. They may not actually be very deadly killers (at least early on), but they’re still pretty damn stressful to be around nonetheless.
