I remember watching Routine’s original trailer back in 2012 and mentally filing it next to “cool sci-fi horror that’ll probably never happen.” A decade later, it resurfaced like a ghost at Summer Game Fest, looking eerily similar to that first teaser. After thirteen years in the oven, I half-expected a bloated immersive sim or an over-explained walking sim that’s terrified of letting you miss a single lore file.
Instead, Routine is surprisingly small. Linear. Almost stubbornly focused. Over the course of a weekend—lights off, headphones on, my pulse consistently hovering just above “doctor’s concern”—it became clear this wasn’t some forgotten curiosity dredged out of development hell. It’s a precise, hand-crafted horror experience that’s far more interested in how you touch its world than how fast you run through it.
If SOMA was a philosophical deep-dive about what it means to be human in a world of broken machines, Routine is the grimy, blue-collar cousin: less monologuing, more fumbling with fuses in a maintenance corridor while something metallic clicks its way toward you in the dark. And for me, that shift from cerebral to tactile is exactly why it works.
Union Plaza, the lunar colony you’re stuck in, might be one of the most convincing sci-fi spaces I’ve explored in years. It’s not chasing photorealism so much as a specific vibe: imagine a space station built by people who worshipped 70s NASA hardware, 80s shopping malls, and 90s office parks, then sealed the whole thing in vacuum dust.
The word “Kubrickian” gets thrown around a lot in marketing copy, but here it actually fits. Broad concourses broken up by harsh fluorescent strips, big viewing windows that let the chalky moonlight bleed in, and those terrifyingly long, dead-quiet corridors that feel like they were laid out by someone who hates people. It’s all clean geometry and sterile surfaces undercut by grime, clutter, and a creeping sense that whatever routine life existed here went catastrophically sideways.
What really sold it for me is how un-gamified the space is. There are no glowing collectibles or objective markers screaming “INTERACT HERE.” Desks are just desks until you actually dig through the paper mess. Dark corners are just dark corners—until suddenly they aren’t. The optional film grain filter complements the cassette-futurist aesthetic so well I almost felt like I was flipping through a VHS of Cold War nightmares.
On PC, Unreal Engine 5 performance was shockingly smooth—none of the hitching that’s plagued other UE5 titles lately. Smooth enough that I could stay immersed in Union Plaza’s nicotine-yellow stairwells and black-as-ink service shafts without a second thought.
Routine technically has first-person shooter bones, but if you go in expecting dead-eyed headshots, you’re going to have a bad time. The real star is the CAT—the Cosmonaut Assistance Tool—a chunky, gun-shaped device that looks part Hasselblad camera, part Fisher-Price toy, part industrial scanner.
The shape is a deliberate fake-out. You aim, you “fire.” But instead of bullets, you’re sliding in chunky modules, flicking power toggles, pinging signals, and projecting clunky UI overlays onto the environment. You learn how to slot in a cartridge, power on the torch module, and interpret the static-filled viewfinder to reveal hidden codes or interact with control panels. It feels like using a real piece of early-space-age tech—imperfections and all.
This emphasis on touch bleeds into everything Routine does. You’re not a super-soldier; you’re a space engineer. Your “moveset” is loading disk drives in humming server rooms, rebalancing power loads, coaxing dead systems back to life. The CAT doesn’t turn you into a badass—it just lets you do your job, clumsily, under far more stress than any union contract would ever allow.
What I liked most is how little handholding there is. Environmental puzzles feel like mini immersive-sim scenarios with tight, authored solutions. The clues are all in the world—emails on CRT monitors, handwritten notes with key phrases aggressively underlined, weirdly specific maintenance instructions that later prove crucial.
One of Routine’s nastiest tricks is refusing to break its own fiction. The pause menu doesn’t actually pause anything. The only way to save is through the CAT’s PDA, which means digging into diegetic menus that exist inside the world itself. Every screen, from login terminals to security feeds, lives inside Union Plaza, and the game never lets you forget it.
If you played SOMA, you’ll recognize the flavor of dread this creates. Rifling through personal emails while distant metallic footsteps echo behind you. The way your cursor feels too slow when you’re trying to slam a door shut via an in-world interface. Routine does exactly that, just with a Soviet-lunar accent.
Sound design pushes hostility over the line from “immersive” to “I need a breather.” The clunk of module chips sliding into the CAT. The off-tempo thud-thud-thud of boots on steel decking. Distant creaks in the hull that sound just enough like footsteps. The highlight is a late-game sequence in the heart of the security network, where alarms, machinery, and something far less friendly create a binaural wall of noise that’s almost physically uncomfortable.
Let’s talk about the robot in the room—the Type-05 security units. They stand perfectly still in shadowy doorways, all clean lines and dead sensors, then jerk to life with unnerving speed once you cross an invisible tripwire. The first chase through the empty mall, backed by a minimalist but brutally effective musical sting, had me bouncing between cover points like a panicked pinball.
Crucially, they don’t always kill you—at least not at first. That changes the dynamic. Death in horror games can reset tension, but Routine lets dread linger instead of cutting to a “Game Over” screen every time you slip up. When permadeath does strike, it lands hard: the first time I saw the full death animation, I physically recoiled from the monitor. It’s not gore for gore’s sake; it’s a punctuation mark on a mistake you absolutely don’t want to repeat.
Routine also fixes a common stalking-horror flaw: waiting. Alien: Isolation’s xenomorph is a marvel, but my lasting memory is sitting in lockers, slowly getting bored between panic spikes. Routine balances its encounters, giving you breathing room to decode ciphers and then tossing you into vicious hide-and-seek finales. It’s not as “smart” as Alien’s AI, but it’s far kinder on the player’s patience.
Marketing has already nudged Routine into “SOMA successor” territory, so let’s address that head-on. No, it’s not trying to outthink Frictional’s existential masterpiece. You won’t be sitting through extended philosophical debates about identity and consciousness. But it absolutely drinks from the same well.
The core story is straightforward once you’ve pieced together scattered logs. If you’ve seen Alien or 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you’re familiar with modern fungal or biological horror, you’ll spot the broad strokes. Routine wants you to follow what happened on Union Plaza by the time the credits roll, not puzzle it out via cryptic symbolism.
Where it earns its “successor” label is in how it makes you sit with uncomfortable implications rather than shouting them in your face. Questions flicker at the margins: when consciousness hops across synthetic bodies, how different is that from you piloting an empty spacesuit? After space-race euphoria and Challenger’s horror, what does it mean that humanity keeps flinging bodies into hostile emptiness?
I didn’t find it as emotionally devastating as SOMA—few games are—but it scratched a similar itch: that lingering discomfort that follows you out of the dark long after the credits roll. And that’s why, thirteen years in the making, Routine finally deserves every ounce of hype.
Routine may not redefine sci-fi horror, but it refines its core strengths: atmosphere, tactile puzzles, and unrelenting tension. The replay value comes from spotting hidden logs you missed and experimenting with CAT module combos in optional side areas. On PC, it runs buttery-smooth on Unreal Engine 5, and early console reports show stable performance as well.
If you loved SOMA’s creeping dread but wished for more hands-on interaction, Routine is your lunar fix. It’s a lean, focused horror that rewards patience and makes every flick of the CAT feel earned. Strap on your headset, dim the lights, and prepare to rethink what “routine maintenance” really means—this one’s a buy.
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