Sci-Fi Horror Game Routine Arrives In December, 13 Years After Its Reveal

Today’s ID@Xbox showcase featured the surprising announcement that Routine, a sci-fi horror game first announced well over a decade ago, finally has a release date: December 4.

Routine is a first-person horror game set within a lunar base sporting an aesthetic described as an '80s-era vision of the future. Players must explore the base after it goes quiet, using special tools to investigate why the station has gone dark. However, deadly machines such as killer robots roam the facility, and players are forced to sneak, run, and hide from these mechanical threats.

As the debut title by Lunar Software, Routine was first announced at Gamescom 2012 with a 2013 launch window. It would suffer numerous delays as Lunar Software released updates less and less frequently; the game would fall off the map for years with nary an update, leading many to question its existence. 

Routine re-debuted during Summer Game Fest 2022, and Lunar Software explained the game's lengthy development cycle in a blog post. The studio revealed it had restarted development at some point after being unhappy with the game's direction. “As we were approaching what we believed to be the end of development, we were finding more and more things that we weren’t happy with that negatively impacted the experience," said Lunar Software in 2022. "We had worked on the project for 5 years at that point and simply couldn’t release it as it was.” 

Lunar Software also endured financial troubles that further slowed production. Things became so challenging that the designers could only work on Routine part-time while taking on other jobs to keep the studio afloat. A lifeline came when publisher Raw Fury was announced as the game's new publisher in 2022, along with the announcement that former Doom and Wolfenstein composer Mick Gordon had been enlisted to create the game's soundtrack.

It's surreal to know that Routine is finally on the horizon, and it will be very interesting to see how its spin on the “helpless protagonist” horror trend popularized by Amnesia: The Dark Descent in the early 2010s holds up in 2025. You can check out Routine on Xbox platforms and PC, and it will launch day one on Xbox Game Pass.