ROUTINE

Last game that made this scarred with that type of alien vibe was Alien Isolation, Routine was a good game overall, love the old school aesthetics

Perfekter sehr ruhiger Horror und Grandiose Story

This game looks amazing and runs just as well. Too scary for me.

10/10

Very abstract and stressful at times with the second threat. Amazing graphics.

Anyone saying this takes cues from Alien Isolation probably doesn't know that this had a teaser out before that game was even announced. As for other comparisons I see people make, the Alien franchise for me has only ever had a hook in the Xenomorph, which got old in Aliens and tacky afterwards. In addition, anything with a flamethrower automatically becomes too much of a power fantasy to be interesting; couldn't stand Isolation. SOMA is similarly in your face in the spook department, with grating surface-level philosophy on top. So, I was VERY pleasantly surprised by this game, which allows its setting to feel very non-exaggerated, which includes having the scary stuff be firmly planted in mellow cosmic horror rather than just some animal with sharp teeth, or digital magic. I don't exactly play a lot of horror games (so take all of this with a grain of salt I guess), mostly because they're usually so mired in tropes, but this was a delight, feeling like it's based on some old school scifi short story. Was also actually scared by a game for once! The audiovisuals are all completely aligned with the vision (remember to turn the gamma slider all the way down tho, the in-game calibration seems to tell everyone it's still too bright), and the gameplay is entirely diegetic from start to finish (with the one exception of not being able to have a stockpile of batteries on you). Unfortunately, judging by the most common complaint I see, this means that some people will struggle with the figuring things out bit, since the colour palette rarely includes yellow. Making things more obvious would destroy the impression of an actual lunar station though, so tough luck I say. And it ain't exactly Blue Prince so the vast majority of people should be fine. (If anything, it should be pointed out that there is some stretching with regard to how things should likely have been within the setting, for the sake of player experience. But it is handled fairly well - eg, the terminals being openly accessible and their info being limited to what's interesting for the player could maybe be explained with the time period aesthetic and security reasons, the [spoiler]chemistry puzzle[/spoiler] feeling a little simple can be motivated with it supposedly being aimed at non-professionals within the setting, etc. These are only nitpicks if you move outside of the realm of games though, because for a game, this is essentially just a simulation.) A few nitpicks: - The implementation of a certain property of [spoiler]the monster[/spoiler] that's hinted at multiple times in the logs. Since this property didn't seem to hold when I first should have noticed it, or even several times after, made me think it actually wasn't a thing. Until I realized that it actually is a thing, but only sometimes. I'd have preferred it to be a lot more prevalent, mostly for spook factor but also so you don't draw the same erroneous conclusion I did, thank you. - Enemies grabbed me through objects more than once when I crouched under something, by which I mean they were completely obscured. I may have been too close to the barrier, but I feel like this shouldn't happen either way. - I feel like [spoiler]the monster was shown too much, partly because of the invisibility not being as prominent, see above, and also wasn't quite alien enough to be uncomfortable to look at. Its related death animations I also felt were both a little too lingering (oh no look at all these cute little limbs, aren't they scary?) and too tame, just some added [i]crunch[/i] could've solved that latter thing[/spoiler] - [spoiler]The jump scare with the ID card - maybe it wasn't supposed to be like this, but the monster just... wasn't there afterwards. Made it feel pretty forced[/spoiler] Also, I mayyyybe might have preferred a slightly longer ending sequence, if you've played it you probably know what I'm talking about. And it would have been nice with some more usage of the excellent leaning mechanic, both up and down. Anyway, if you like getting tickled in the head, go ahead and buy + enjoy the game!