On occasion, your typical gamer will look for something that doesn’t fit the usual game genre mold. They’ll want an adventure that’s different. Unexpected.
The new survival-horror game Routine scratches that itch. But it’s also a title that just won’t work for some players.
This highly anticipated, first-person, sci-fi horror game has been in slow-burn development for the last 12 years. It sets its action in an abandoned, retro-future moon base. The calendars and documents all say it’s 1978. But this base is more like a stretched out lunar mall and hotel than anything the real world would have concocted in the ‘70s.
And when I say abandoned, I mean that the place is quite empty—broken and sparking and locked down as if something catastrophic just took place before you landed.
You play as a software engineer sent to see what may have interrupted regular communications with the base. You come packing nothing but a spacesuit and a Cosmonaut Assistance Tool (CAT), a square, gun-like device that’s able to connect to the technology of this space station in a variety of ways. The CAT lets you save data, unlock walkways and doors, look through emails and digital documents, shift power settings and the like.
After your initial landing, however, Routine doesn’t give you much help at all.There are no arrows, blinking lights, splashes of paint or objective menus to point out the proper path. And there’s very little to indicate what you’re even there to do. If you look closely enough and experiment with your CAT, you’ll find some emails stating that the base was rocked by a lunar quake, and some suspicious messages indicate that the company in charge was working to cover it up.
If you want to know more, you’ll need to scour the disquietingly shadowed hallways, crawl spaces, deteriorating living quarters, and computer terminals in a very quiet, broken-down and extremely unpopulated moon plaza.
You walk silently, search in detail, and listen carefully.
Why? Because while all the humans may be gone, robots roam the halls. These bots—part of the base’s built-in security system—are large Terminator-like constructs that clomp around with a jerky, creepy, heavy-metal thumping gate. And if they come upon you … you die!
In fact, your only course of action when encountering enemies in Routine (and other non-robot dangers, too) is to run or die. This is not an action title where you fight back or blast away at bots and other enemies. This is a game of exploration; perceptive discernment; thoughtful puzzle solving; great, textured atmosphere; and moments of pure terror. Period.
This single-player game does not allow multiplayer or co-op play, and it doesn’t require an online connection other than for an initial download.
Gamers play as a frightened innocent who’s trying to figure out what happened to everyone and discover the secret at the core of this lunar plaza. And in a very real sense, this survival game becomes something of a relatively short escape-room challenge. Routine shows players what’s happening without telling them how to resolve it.
If players move slowly and meticulously, they can piece all of the elements together and find the final resolution in several hours. Or they can play the game in short sections: there are seven distinct chapters in total.
Some will find the short, unguided play of Routine to be an interesting and immersive challenge. Others will find the game very frustrating.
The game is also designed to instill fear in players. The atmosphere is intensely creepy at times. And a large part of play is made up of running to find some sort of shelter while you hear foes closing in from behind in the deathly quiet environs. The enemies are not typical. They listen and search. They react to light and track you down.
It’s not difficult to find cover if you stay aware of your surroundings. But if you’re caught, enemies will crush and stab you. And the game ends in your death.
We see the remains of dead humans and other creatures—some with vegetation growing from their bodies—throughout the game. There are spatters and smears of blood in certain areas. One video examines the fecal droppings of a creature. We encounter a large, human-like entity and see its bare backside as it walks away.
[Spoiler Warning] It should also be noted that the character you play does not “technically” survive by the game’s conclusion. And that could be disturbing for younger players.
Routine is a short and well-crafted survival horror game that doesn’t fit a typical template. But parents of younger players should be aware of the intensely creepy and terrifying atmosphere that this game crawls through.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
