Routine is a video game that has been a long time coming. I first wrote about it in 2012! I wrote about it again in 2022, when we learned that the original version of the game had basically been scrapped and the team had started over, hence the long wait. But even that was three years ago!

So seeing it on Steam last week sent me. Had it been out for years and I'd somehow missed it? No, it just took this long to come out. I'm very glad it did though, because in several key ways, Routine absolutely rules.

Set on an abandoned lunar space station, you play as a guy tasked with finding out what happened to everyone, and maybe learning a little about yourself in the process. Routine's opening minutes are spent waking you up and giving you your first taste of its grimy, retrofuture world, and they're also the game's finest.

This game looks amazing. The art style is as far inside my wheelhouse as it gets; this is a lived-in sci-fi space, with giant blast doors sitting alongside wooden tables from the 1970s. Outside, lunar tram stations are full of advertising imagery that looks like it's from 1987. Everything is dirty and heavy and broken, and looks like it's been used a lot. I could spend days just wandering around admiring the sense of place that permeates every corner of the station. Even the fluorescent lightbulbs found throughout the station have little bits of branding on them, a level of detail I don't ever remember seeing before.

It also helps that you feel so part of the world. You're wearing a space helmet, which distorts the edges of your view ever so slightly, and your big heavy space boots make every step considered, as though you're a person moving through a space, not a floating camera attached to the end of a gun. Routine has a very strong desire to commit fully to the first-person perspective, so there are no breaks to access emails or the save menu. Even your gun and all its settings are accessed directly, by looking at it and touching its buttons. You aren't gliding through Routine's world, you are in it.

Which, like I've said, was amazing for the first ten minutes or so as I read some stuff, clomped around, opened some doors, dug through some people's stuff and just generally marvelled at the art design. But then, once you've got the basics of the world and how you move mastered, you meet your first bad guy. And my heart sank.

This isn't a general criticism of the game's design--the developers can make whatever they want, it's their game!--but man, I hate horror games. I just don't enjoy them, I receive no pleasure from their tension or scares whatsoever, and so in instances like this, where their accompanying world is so rich and ready to be explored, I hate them even more. I'd have happily paid to play Routine just to wander the station's corridors! Instead you spend quite a bit of time running and hiding from bad guys, which reduces much of this detailed world into a panicked blur.

Why are games like this and Alien Isolation, so noted for their intricate world-building and attention to detail, saddled with gameplay that stops you exploring and enjoying those same worlds in peace? Maybe the intention is precisely that contrast: to provide a world that immerses you, so that when you're threatened in it the whole thing feels extra scary. For me, though, it's just a frustration.

There isn't even a difficulty toggle here--again, not a general criticism, just something I as an individual like--to soften the blow, or the solace that if I can kill these guys they'll stay dead and I'll get that chance to explore in peace, because these killer robots are unkillable. The best you can do is briefly disable them.

Alien Isolation: The I-Can’t-Believe-I-Waited-Seven-Years-For-This Review - Kotaku

A game that was both seemingly made specifically for me, but also made to keep me at arm’s length

KotakuLuke Plunkett

A bummer, then, but I enjoyed my brief time with Routine's world and weapon so much that I'll hold out hope that some day there'll be an exploratory or story mode released. Or, at the very least, enough time will have passed that a trainer or some cheats will come out so that I, the scardiest man in video games, can finally explore its corridors in peace.

(Anyway, because I spent more time enjoying the view than I did solving puzzles or evading bad guys, please enjoy these screenshots I took of Routine's incredible space station.)

NEW HAVEN, CT—Shedding new light on a previously undocumented effect of loneliness, a team of psychologists at Yale University found that at least 80% of Americans lack the social connections necessary to pull off a heist. “When it comes to putting together a crew with the skills needed for a bank job or a jewel heist, a majority of Americans reported knowing just one or two guys, tops,” said lead researcher Jane Iannitello, adding that only 20% had any safecrackers in their lives, a mere 16% knew any hacker prodigies with a rebellious streak, and fewer than 5% had access to Taiwanese acrobats doubling as masters of disguise. “As they spend more and more time on social media, people just aren’t going out to underground boxing rings, art auctions, or other settings where they are likely to meet a fast-talking charismatic type who pulls them into a daring heist. They often lose touch with their demolition experts after childhood, and though people may be eager for a big money payday that could mean walking away from the life for good, they are too afraid to put themselves out there for fear of rejection. Even in cases where they have a crew big enough for a heist, lonely Americans are often left feeling stranded due to a lack of getaway drivers, which forces them to brandish firearms at total strangers and demand that they drive, just drive.” While researchers cautioned the trend is likely to continue, they went on to state that some of the negative effects could be mitigated by reaching out to therapists with a plan, a keycard, and nothing to lose.

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