'If you want to torture somebody, first show them your tools' is one of the better horror game design lessons taught by Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I thought of Amnesia's cistern chapter while playing through a later area in Lunar Software's excellent first-person spookathon Routine, announced 13 long years ago, though only in active development for around five. The area centres on a curious underground tree, with water dripping from a hydroponic ceiling and sealed doors on all sides. You can imagine Amnesia's Shadow manifesting here, clogging the roots with acid rot as it homes in on your comically loud footfalls.

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After a 13-year wait, it’s finally time to enter the abandoned lunar base and unravel the mysteries of what happened there in the first-person survival horror game Routine. Routine Developer: Lunar Software Price: $25 Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC (reviewed) MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review. Routine was originally announced […]

Hype is a curious thing. Each year, videogame after videogame is fed into the machine via a conveyor belt of teasers and trailers. Lunar Software's Routine was one such tender morsel offered up at Gamescom 2012, forgotten by all but the most devoted sci-fi horror fans as it descended into development hell. Its reappearance at Summer Game Fest a decade later left a greater impression, but whatever hype it garnered has died down in the years since. Now, it exists as Schrodinger's cat, gravid with expectation yet weightless in the suspension of all expectations.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Routine review - the SOMA successor I've always wanted