Routine Review (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, & PC)

Admit it, you’d already given up on Routine, and if you hadn’t, well, you must be one patient soul. Over 13 years it took for this indie sci-fi horror to arrive. The heavy burden of a small core team of three developers. After the rampant bumps in the road, it’s finally here, and like you, I approached the final game with caution. 

A lengthy development time period is always a warning signal. Issues that led to the delays are likely to sprout their ugly heads during your playthrough. But alas, Routine has escaped its seemingly doomed fate with gusto. Perhaps even skyrocketing to among the best horror games of 2025? Find out why in our deep-dive Routine review below.

Alone in Space

Digging into the core of the Earth isn’t really feasible for expanding humanity’s reach and influence. So, it’s always made sense that the more actionable possibilities lie in space. And in Routine, humans have indeed made it to the moon, albeit around the ‘80s. As a result, the aesthetic here is grounded in a pleasant retro futuristic outlook. 

Where the technology is old and mechanical, and the analog computers and terminals dot around your exploration. As a software engineer sent to a tourist lunar space station called Union Plaza, your job for the day involves investigating and fixing a security system malfunction. Upon arrival, it becomes abundantly clear that your problems are far more dire than a technical problem.

No one else is at Union Plaza, no guards, staff, or guests. You’re all alone in a place that appears to have been deserted. Except the broken systems and appliances suggest that there’s been damage. That people didn’t just disappear, and were likely hunted and destroyed. The sinister robots and monsters that stalk you are certainly an indication of something that went terribly wrong. And further into the story, a more sinister supernatural force reveals itself. 

Breadcrumb Trail

Yet, none of the mysteries about what happened at Union Plaza are immediately revealed to you. Instead, you’re encouraged to put together the missing pieces of the history and events on your own. Deliberately and meticulously, as you analyze every clue, every audio recording, email, and diary entry you come across. These help fill in the blanks of a mysterious story that continuously piques your interest.

It never gets tedious collecting clues and slowly uncovering more lore and story detail. In fact, you feel more pressed to find out the key pieces, more curious the more the story unfolds. And this can, at times, be the downfall of most promising stories. When the climax doesn’t quite reach the height you anticipate. And worse, when the conclusion fails to achieve the impact you hope for. 

Routine treads dangerously close along these lanes. The second act is ambitious and introduces an unexpected twist that changes the whole turn of events. While it definitely is surprising to unravel, it can feel lacking in an optimally climactic feel and impact. It feels like an ending that misses hitting the bullseye based purely on a few wrong choices. Otherwise, it’s a story that’s a definite joy to have chased.

Dread Space

A huge part of what makes Routine’s story damn special is the heavy atmosphere that lingers throughout exploration. You enter a world whose very air feels suffocating. It’s dusty and filled with dread for something sinister building up. Not just in meeting the same fate as the people at Union Plaza, but also the constant danger of the robots and monsters stalking you.

They’re unpredictable and can appear at any moment. Thus, keeping you on high alert for their encroaching footsteps and presence. Every move forward comes with the conscious thought at the back of your mind that at any moment, the terrifying robots can spring up on you. That they can catch you off-guard and drain the life out of you. 

With excellent lighting and shadows, you traverse eerie rooms and hallways dripping in atmospheric dread. You feel chills go down your spine even when you’re going through drawers looking for clues. And still taking note of places to hide or ready to run if the scary robots and monsters show up. 

Brain Teasers

It’s interesting how Routine handles its gameplay. You have your usual puzzles for these types of games. Nothing too out of the box, or that will give you a headache to solve. They require logic and common sense, which with patience, will come to you. And with satisfaction at figuring out the solutions. Whether it’s finding codes to open locked doors or accessing terminals, the puzzles are clever, not just in teasing the brain, but at times, being so simple that you laugh at yourself for taking as long to figure out.

The puzzles are randomized as well. So, looking up solutions from online sources will be tricky. And it’s honestly great that way because they are a huge part of adding tension. See, the enemy AI, for some reason, seems to go hard when you’re solving puzzles. So, you’re having to stop what you’re doing to run and hide, and wait for the enemy to clear out, before going back to what you’re doing. At first, it keeps you on edge, especially in the moments you stop to think through a puzzle. But eventually, it gets annoying to get interrupted right whenever you’re in the middle of doing something. 

You can’t pause the game, either. Or see how much health you have left. The entire screen has no clutter at all, which is immersive, for sure, and comes with its own tension, too. When you can’t risk engaging an enemy because of the chance that you might not have enough health to survive the encounter. Your safe bet is to run and hide. And because you can’t pause the game, either, there’s no way to break the game or give yourself relief from being constantly on high alert.

All-in-One

Speaking of enemy encounters, you can’t kill the robots and monsters. But you can surely stun them with your Cosmonaut Assistant Tool (CAT). It’s the all-in-one tool you’ll have in Routine to stun enemies, access terminals, reveal fingerprints and clues, save the game, look up objectives; essentially everything interactive. And all with an interesting catch: different actions have different modules that need to be switched out to activate them.

The modules have respective buttons that are manipulated manually. So, practically pulling out your CAT when you need to use it, using your mouse cursor to hover over to the specific module you need to switch out, and activating it with the respective button. As you can imagine, it’s quite a time-consuming process that can put you in tricky situations when an enemy is nearby. Yet, that same need to operate the CAT manually adds another layer of tension that makes you overly sensitive to your surroundings.

It’s gameplay features like these that make Routine so special. From the retro-futuristic visuals that are deeply atmospheric and instill heavy dread to the helplessness when enemies spot you and the manual CAT that feels clunky to control, it all combines to make one of the most tense, bone-chilling horror games you’ll play this year, perhaps ever.

Verdict

Routine’s story is constantly urging you to find out more. To keep searching for clues and unravel more tidbits of information that will finally make sense of what happened to Union Plaza. That sense of curiosity and mystery hardly ever stops, even when you’re deep into solving puzzles and evading the monsters. 

It’s partially because of the tension and dread that follow you around, regardless of where you are or what you’re doing. You’re always aware of a sinister feel and presence that can take you out at any moment. And so, you can never let your guard down, made even more terrifying when you don’t have any way of killing your enemy.

The only thing that will save you is running and hiding. Your presence mustn’t be felt, forcing you to maneuver Union Plaza like a scared mouse. Not many horror games manage to deliver that feeling of terror without resorting to jump scares and cheap theatrics. Only through an eerie atmosphere and building tension has Routine managed to hit all the right spots as far as a truly scary experience is concerned.

Word of caution: Routine won’t be for everyone. You might find some of its choices frustrating, even diabolical. No HUD, manual saves, but also manual and clunky handling of your CAT. The enemy AI could also use more refining to make it more intelligent and unpredictable. Yet, Routine knows exactly what it is, and doubles down on tweaking genre tropes to add additional layers of tension. And in that regard, they prove successful. A huge relief, indeed, after over 13 years in development.