Routine review: "This imperfect but wonderfully atmospheric moon-based horror leaves a strong impression"

Routine is one of those games where explaining the best parts of the experience in detail would be to ruin them. This is a shame, as discussing the weaker elements – chinks in the armor, small but destabilising weaknesses – is much easier. But let me start with a simple yet important compliment: you'd never guess that this is a game which has been in development on and off for well over a decade.

Routine was first announced in 2012, back when we were all innocent and never suspected that Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen would haunt radio stations and high street stores forever. The game's final form has proven to be a first-person sci-fi horror, peppered with things determined to kill you. As a software engineer sent to investigate a system malfunction on a lunar base, you are woefully unprepared for what you're stumbling into.

Moon with a view

It soon becomes apparent that the base is abandoned, and the abandonment may not have been entirely voluntary. The more you explore, the more obvious it becomes that the base's robot helpers became very unfriendly for some reason; and the louder the whispers of a mysterious illness become. This is largely communicated through e-mails, diary entries, and audio recordings. However, these are used much more sparingly than you might expect, and pretty much all of it is entirely optional. The restraint shown in this respect, combined with the dark and damaged surroundings and mostly empty corridors and rooms, creates a strong atmosphere of dark wonder to wade through.

It's not long before you start running into the robots, of which there are two varieties; small and cute (rare) and tall and murderous (more common than you'd like). You can use your multipurpose CAT tool to stun them, but the effect only lasts for a few seconds, and this is your only offensive option.

You're therefore encouraged to hide from them, or run away at great speed if you're spotted. A common comparison is Alien Isolation (which Routine's genesis precedes), which certainly gives you a good idea of the desire to avoid confrontation and the hide-and-seek nature of creeping around them. Unfortunately, it's a comparison that shines a less than flattering light on Routine.

There's a wonderful creepiness to the robots. They're superbly designed, and when I'm literally crawling just a few feet from an inactive one hoping it won't suddenly spring to life, it's always tense. Most of my interactions with them, however, are some variation on being interrupted in the middle of something, running away and/or hiding, then finding my way back to continue my task. This happens far too often, and I never find enemies frightening. I just find them annoying.

This feeling of irritation only increases when I eventually shut the robots down, and progress to the next area of the base to face… something else. It's a very different enemy, but the fundamental mechanics are the same, and so is my reaction to having to deal with them. While hiding, waiting to see if the coast is clear, I don't feel like somebody out of their depth fearing for their life. I feel like a grumpy old man peeking out of his curtains to see if the Christmas carolers have left his driveway yet.

Star power

The way enemies hunt and react to you is overly basic, and the regularity with which you need to hide or run is, at certain points, tiresome. Enemy AI simply isn't complex enough to justify so many of these encounters, and this aspect should have been dialled back. I never once found myself walking away from the game in frustration or boredom, but I could've done with fewer interruptions to the moody exploration and involved puzzle-solving.

In stark contrast to the disappointing stealth aspect, Routine's puzzles are excellent. Generally speaking, they involve an impressive balance of game logic and common sense, with a sprinkle of randomization here and there to ensure you can't just look up codes on the internet. There are a handful of 'find this code' tasks, but there are also proper puzzles that ask you to think without being aggressively complicated, and are satisfying to solve. There is also, much to my amusement, one malfunctioning terminal that you can fix simply by turning it off then turning it on again.

The story is carefully considered and well told, and only really starts to reveal itself towards the end (assuming you've taken the time to read and listen to traces of the missing crew). There are so many horror stories that answer the question "But why is this happening?" with "Because we want it to". By the time the credits rolled however, I felt that – despite a few loose ends I wish had been tied up, or possibly tied up in knots big enough for me to see – I was looking at a sequence of events that actually made sense.

Routine's logic doesn't always hold up very well at a granular level, though. I'm thinking primarily of a puzzle that involves photos left by a missing member of the crew, who must've been about ten seconds away from solving the puzzle herself before apparently giving up; and the time that I was stalked by an enemy who was only able to follow me by using an elevator… which I'd already cut the power to in order to prevent this from happening. Minor criticims, but ones that took me out of the experience briefly at the time.

Was Routine worth a wait of 13 Earth years? No, of course not; no game would be. But it's an intelligent, atmospheric horror that, despite a few stumbles, remains intriguing from beginning to end. I sure hope you like playing hide-and-seek and tag, though.

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