After a decade of silence, Routine is back in development

Back in 2013, a gameplay trailer for a small, sci-fi take on Amnesia made one hell of an impact on me. Taking cues from Alien, it was sterile, analogue, a retrofuturist nightmare station that felt oppressively lonely, right up until the moment it became clear you weren't alone.

Until today, when Geoff Keighley revealed that Routine is back in (or still in) development, with developer Lunar Software now working with publisher Raw Fury to get this thing completed. Beyond that, we only got a fresh glimpse at what was served up a decade ago—a new look at a station whose decrepit wallpapers and quiet corridors still manage to hold their own, even in a post Alien: Isolation world.

We do get a glimpse at the monster here, and hulking great robots weren't quite what I was expecting. But I continue to be curious as to what the deal is with the chunky little handheld camcorder, which we briefly see used to scan one of the androids.

Routine doesn't yet have a release date, but I'm just happy to know it's still in production, since we last saw it in 2016. If you want to know what happened with the game all those years ago, Waypoint's Patrick Klepek investigated Routine's vanishing act in a feature back in 2018.

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.