ROUTINE

ROUTINE’s appeal is careful exploration: there are no waypoint markers, so you search the lunar base, study clues and use the C.A.T. to face threats. At $13.63 from Eneba, it is at this site’s recorded low, and the Steam rating of 91%% across 7,622 reviews offers another point of reference. It suits players drawn to solitary, methodical horror rather than guided navigation. At $17.49 from Eneba, ROUTINE is available at its current price, with a Steam player rating of 91%% across 7,622 reviews.

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91%Steam Reviews7.6K reviews79Metacritic/10079OpenCritic/100

Released: Dec 4, 2025

Sci-fi · Singleplayer · Psychological Horror · Atmospheric · Cinematic

EnebaROUTINE Steam Key (PC) GLOBAL·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-22-45%~ $13.63ALL-TIME LOWSave $3.86 vs SteamBuy now

K4GROUTINE Steam CD Key·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-22~~~ $28.07~~-50%from~ $14.00(~ €12.46)ALL-TIME LOWBuy now

KinguinRoutine PC Steam CD Key·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-21~~~ $28.07~~-49%from~ $14.32(~ €12.75)ALL-TIME LOWBuy now

GAMIVORoutine EN Global·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-21-42%from~ $14.40(~ €12.82)ALL-TIME LOWBuy now

Microsoft Store·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-22~~~ $24.99~~-35%~ $16.24Buy now

Steam·Platform:·United States Steam official price~~~ $24.99~~-30%~ $17.49Buy now

Gamesporium·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-22~~~ $28.07~~-35%~ $18.24Buy now

GameBilletROUTINE·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-21~~~ $24.99~~-17%from~ $20.69Buy now

All-time low ~ $14.66across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low

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Price History

Past 36 months · Updated daily

Historical Low~ $13.822026-07Current Low Across Stores~ $13.63EnebaAt its historical low now

Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.

01About ROUTINE

Explore an abandoned lunar base shaped by an ’80s vision of the future in ROUTINE. Investigate your surroundings, use the C.A.T. to access terminals and identify clues, and survive unknown threats by running, hiding or attempting to defend yourself. Steam players rate ROUTINE 91%% positive across 7,622 reviews. The Steam PC version supports single-player and full controller support. Interface and subtitles are available in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese; English audio is available. Released December 4, 2025.

Credits

Developer

Lunar Software

Publisher

Raw Fury

Steam player reviews

91%positiveVery Positive7,622 Steam reviews

Lowest recorded in 36 months

$13.822026-07-30 · KinguinBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.

Language support

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
Simplified Chinese	Yes	Yes	—
English	Yes	Yes	Yes
French	Yes	Yes	—

Show 6 more languages

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
German	Yes	Yes	—
Spanish	Yes	Yes	—
Japanese	Yes	Yes	—
Korean	Yes	Yes	—
Portuguese-Brazil	Yes	Yes	—
Russian	Yes	Yes	—

Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22

02Before you buy

Navigation

Explore the abandoned lunar base without waypoint markers; observing the environment and reviewing data are part of finding your way.

Play and language

The Steam PC version supports single-player and full controller support. Interface and subtitle languages include English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese; English audio is available.

03Frequently asked questions

What do you do in ROUTINE?

You investigate an abandoned lunar base, piece together what happened, and survive unknown threats by running, hiding or attempting to defend yourself.

What is the C.A.T. for?

The Cosmonaut Assistance Tool accesses terminals, helps navigate and identify clues, and can be used as a last resort for defense.

Does ROUTINE have waypoint markers?

No. Finding your way without waypoint markers is part of the experience.

Popular Steam reviews

Native-language selection · 10 reviews

Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.

RecommendedSteam player

12/04/2025

The first game in Steam Greenlight The game that inspired Alien Isolation but got stuck in development The game that would've killed any competition 14 years ago 14 years baby, I was there all along, believing! update: the game itself is fine, set aside loading screens. Could've sure used a big interconnected no-loading map. Liked Alien Isolation? That's pretty much it but with an extra layer of cool factor being the interactions with the world and C.A.T., an electromagnetic gun/remote/datapad all-in-one thingamabob. There are hide-under-the-table segments and tough stalking enemies that got old a long time ago after Penumbra, Amnesia and of course A:I but remember, this game was supposed to come out all the way back in 2013. Thanks for all the comments concerning low playtime, to clear that up: I've been soaking every tiniest piece of info since the initial announcement and knew exactly what I'm getting into. tldr: the game has exceeded my expectations. I've expected an A:I type of "sneak around and press buttons" game and got that PLUS immaculate visuals, controls and especially audio.Show moreShow less

0.8 hours at review988 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

12/06/2025

Before I begin, I must preface this by saying I was with this game every step of the way. From the first trailers involving trudging through dark tunnels with a low-tech CRT pistol, to the blogs mentioning full-body immersion and even the radical idea of permadeath. I never expected such an ambitious game to ever come out, but to see it reach the finish line is an amazing achievement in itself. Starting with the positives, the game looks bloody amazing and runs just as great. It's not even that large, clocking in at around 9.9gb. This is an UE5 game as well, making the small size of the game even more impressive. The audio design is stellar too, from your analog multi tool having lots of satisfying clicks and snaps of each button and slider, to the heavy thumping of both your footsteps and other entities reverberating through the environment. I don't need to say much about the visual design really, it speaks for itself, beautifully tangible and fully realised in the art department. Sadly, by the time the end credits rolled, I just felt very sad. The no doubt laborious development of the game had clearly caused some ideas to get lost along the way, but I felt as if they have sliced away too much, leading to a very lacklustre experience. The full body immersion amounted to little more than being able to see your body and lean around corners, you cannot even pick up physics objects or really use your arms, most environment manipulation later on doesn't even utilise your arms for turning valves or flipping switches. While that doesn't really seem that important, to me it felt at odds with the clearly well-contemplated visual design. Then the enemies came in. Visually and audibly once again, they looked and sounded fantastic. However when it comes time to either evade or confront them they were just a total pushover. From those earlier trailers of turning a corner and watching through a crackling display as an android wades through darkness to get at you I was expecting a lot more pressure. Quite bluntly though they are a total non-issue. You're rarely ever hurting for supplies to deal with them, and their field of vision is so narrow that you can pretty much zoom right around them as if you were Solid Snake. This could be rectified with some difficulty options to make them more alert, but as of writing there are no such features. Next, the levels themselves were surprisingly small and linear. I was expecting something more akin to Alien Isolation or System Shock where you have this interconnected space that you gradually learn as you move through the world. Unfortunately, each area felt less like I was moving through a functional station and more like I was passing by an IKEA showroom where you're only seeing fragments of a space and aren't expected to stick around or return.By the time the game was over, I had no sense of what the moonbase even was or how I got there. It just happened, then I left. Story-wise, I appreciated what they were going for. The game starts with a setup of some sort of malfunctioning AI and an unknown disaster. I won't spoil it, but after a certain point the game takes a hard turn into something completely different and stays in this headspace for the remainder of the game. There were several hints of something more horrific than murder bots in log entries and such, but the transition in terms of gameplay and setting from one idea to the next was incredibly jarring and lacked any real context. The murder bots and the previous characters aren't even mentioned again, making it further feel like I was now playing as either someone else entirely or the previous sections just didn't matter. Overall, I am glad Routine has finally seen the light of day and I'm sure there are those who will enjoy it more than I did. However, I wish that it didn't take this long for a game like this to simply not be my cup of tea. I expected a lot more, but maybe that comes with any project in development hellShow moreShow less

6.9 hours at review193 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

12/04/2025

Years of hand-holding and blatantly telling the player what to do have done irreparable damage to gamers' critical thinking and attention spans. What's your ID? It's on your suit - look down. How do I get this thing to raise? Shoot the thing. You're a technician - how do you fix the thing? Turn it on and off. There's so many simple things with simple solutions that will filter out streamers like DSP. The game does very little hand holding. Everything is so diegetic in this game for the sake of immersion. There's no UI, but you can see relevant information directly on your CAT. You directly interact with the terminal without a secondary UI popping up. I'm liking it so far. It's definitely well made. I like the atmosphere.Show moreShow less

3 hours at review666 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

12/05/2025

It's games like this where i wish there was a mixed option, which is especially disappointing considering just how long some people have waited for this. On a technical level the game is fantastic, its audio and visuals are both 10/10 with the sound of the enemies alone succeeding in unnerving me, and while other games have used the same 70s/80s retrofuture art style ROUTINE uses since it was first announced, it still nails it in a way that still feels unique. There's some good scares in here that are really helped by just how good a job this tiny development team did in those two aspects, and I can't really say anything bad about it, it also helps it ran great on my mid-ranged machine, which while not surprising considering the game takes place in almost exclusively in cramped corridors, Unreal Engine 5 is infamous for performance issues even on rigs that cost thousands of dollars. Mechanically is another story and where the positives become harder to find, you have only one item throughout the entire game, the C.A.T., which serves as both a way to solve puzzles and also stuns enemies for a significant period of time, and while you would think ammo for would be a precious commodity, with each battery giving you 3 shots, in reality they are absolutely everywhere (probably because it's also needed to progress puzzles), imagine if in Alien Isolation just about every single room gave you a full tank of fuel for your flamethrower, that's about how often ROUTINE throws batteries at you, the only limiting factor is that you can't pick up batteries to use later and instead must replace your current one, but considering they are absolutely everywhere that's not really something you really feel most the time, and once you realize this it unfortunately kills a lot of the tension. So maybe ROUTINE's story helps elevate it? Well the most I can say is that it's there, and it does have some things that are interesting, but it's good concepts and bad execution, since it never really explores them in the first place, the story is told almost exclusively through logs, emails, and the environment, and they do have interesting groundwork, but then the game ends, in a pretty haphazard, confusing, and pretty unsatisfying way that makes you wonder what the hell just happened and not in a good way. Overall despite loving the art style and having a lot of good horror baseline elements, the extremely shallow mechanical depth combined with a lackluster at best story makes this difficult to recommend, and when you also consider it also being a very short game without really anything in the way of replay value, it becomes even more difficult. To conclude things it's honestly a shock this came out at all with it having been revealed in the ancient year of 2012, and many games that languish in development for even close to that long are almost always utter disasters if they finally release, so maybe it being a game I could recommend on a sale is an accomplishment in itself.Show moreShow less

5.4 hours at review156 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

12/04/2025

From start to finish, Routine is tightly designed and extremely good looking. I absolutely adore the retro-sci-fi aesthetic, and they captured it perfectly in tandem with the amazing audio design. I don't really know how long it's been since there's been a game that's really immersed me into its perspective. The diegetic UI, the movement, the environmental design, the design of various terminals, and the way you operate your CAT tool create the closest thing to the player character being an extension of my own self. That being said, the reason for the negative rating is mostly due to the running time of this game. The game took around 4 hours to beat, and I don't feel as though that does the premise or mechanics justice enough. There's just simply a whole lot more that could've been done with what is here, and the ending just leaves me wanting. I am aware that this game has a small development team of three people and experienced development hell for a decade(?), but the final product feels like only a quarter of a fully-fledged game. From the third chapter onwards, it definitely felt rushed. I didn't find the "horror" gameplay itself to be too engaging. The visual and audio design of the threats (of which there are, unfortunately, only two) are truly stellar, but they lose their shock factor when you realize they're basically a non-issue given how easy it is to counter, outrun, or hide from them. The game also has a tendency to give you wayyy too many batteries for your CAT tool, which is used for various functions of your CAT tool, including immobilizing these threats for a short time. Given this game's lack of on-screen objective indicators, I think the developers overdesigned their environments. Any exploration into any dark rooms quickly lead into a dead ends with no rewards, and the tasks you have to complete are sign posted everywhere on signs, notes, and terminals. I just didn't feel compelled to explore these really nice environments. The puzzles themselves are presented nicely though, even if they're a little too easy. I really do still think this game is worth experiencing, but I wouldn't ever recommend it at full price because of how unfortunately short it is with not a whole lot of replay value.Show moreShow less

4.3 hours at review154 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

12/19/2025

I only heard of ROUTINE from its recent trailer, and based on everything I saw, from the atmosphere to the tools and visuals, this looked like a very promising game. I love sci-fi horror games like Alien Isolation and SOMA, and I had a feeling this game would somewhat capture similar feelings I had to those games. I'll start by saying that the visual and sound design is great, especially in the early chapters. That isn't to say cool stuff doesn't appear later on, but I think these aspects are probably the best positive things I can come away with regarding this game. That, and the general atmosphere early on. For the first few chapters, ROUTINE truly set the stage. On the frontline, the game presented a hostile and foreboding atmosphere though its environment and the stomping machines coming after you. But behind it all, there was a sense of some nameless, intangible terror here. I couldn't really place what exactly I felt, but this undertone of a greater horror set me going forward. By the time I finished chapter 3, I couldn't wait to see what happened next and thought this game was going to be another one of my favorites in sci-fi horror. I was wrong. Chapter 4 onwards was plagued with fetch quests, where the items you're looking for are hidden somewhere in a large, sprawling area filled with many rooms and hallways, all of which are separated by doors that run on limited power that you need to divert and manage constantly. There's a lot of wandering, going so far one way only to essentially be told to go all the way back. Part of this game's charm is the darkness and requirement to be attentive towards the environment, but these only serve to make tasks like this much more tedious and immersion-breaking. I do have low vision, but even some friends of mine who had perfectly normal vision didn't spot these things. The story was also fairly aimless by chapter 4 and never really recovered itself. Chapters 1 through 3 had a clear and defined goal while also planting the seeds of a greater purpose that would eventually show itself. By the fourth chapter, things begin to get muddy and we don't really know what we're doing. Additionally, through the first half, we learn of another looming threat that plagued the whole facility. By the time we get hints of this threat and what it did to everyone, there's a lot of room for speculation that just builds upon the horror already present. From chapter 4 onwards however, it all sort of grinds to a halt. I go into this more below. I'll also note that the game's mechanics aren't really utilized that well. For example, at the start of the game, you are taught to do a low crouch. Aside from a few peeking locations and I think one early puzzle interaction, there really aren't any other times you're required to low crouch or could use it to your advantage. Likewise, throughout the game you can upgrade your tool to do more things. These features are used heavily in the places they are introduced, but become sparse or even forgotten later on. It's not bad to have a sliding window type of approach to what tools the player needs for what area, but it really felt confusing given how these tools were presented only to go on and essentially forget one of them and underutilize another one. EDIT: It's been a bit now since I've played the game, and I've still been giving it thought every now and again. Despite what I've said here, the game has kind of stuck with me, primarily because of the visual style, sounds, and sheer presentation of things throughout the story. I maintain that the story lost me for the multiple factors I previously discussed, but I also feel that I have possibly stunted my own experience via a few things. Looking at the 11.7 hours I've played, at least two thirds of that time was spent on the latter half of the game, and it wasn't really because of any bad design. It, genuinely, was because I got stumped for a long time between the various puzzles at this point in the game. I feel like this sort of fatigued me and just made me lose some of the immersion the game had built up solely because I wound up wandering around so much. This game does very little hand-holding and let's the player lean via notes, terminals, or other environmental sources. Really, all this says is a lot of my troubles with the puzzles and progressing the story is probably my own lack of observation and intelligence. I honestly probably just missed a lot of natural cues and ground myself to a halt because of it. As I said before, I have low vision, and while I know taht contributed, I am nevertheless in agreement with anyone who says my intelligence was to blame for my experience. I still do have negative feelings towards the latter half's story. Call me simple for finding the basic rogue AI plot in the first half more engaging, but it really just comes back to what I said originally: we knew what we were doing at first, but after chapter 3, all of our actions are kind of unknown to us. Now, I know exactly why this is, I do. I understand the reasons for why the latter half played out like it did, both for the story and the character you play as. I honestly just... didn't find it to be endearing. I've seen many people comparing the entities to Adam and Eve, as well as saying the induction we did to the moon trailed with this idea and so forth. I understand the symbolism, and it was clear to me that this was the idea even when I played the game originally. I know there's a lot of stuff I'm glossing over when I just focus on that, but considering this, the fungi's/canal's properties, and how it all played out, I still really don't think highly of it. The revelation of the religious allegory and the among other things just didn't really feel interesting to me. Please forgive me if this sounds harsh, but it just felt like baby's first allegory. With time, I've come to feel it's not a bad story, just not as deeply interesting or impactful on me. I'll say one more thing on this. The first half of the game, while more traditional in its plot, felt more focused while also establishing the world, environment, and characters. For example, you explore this place that has various functions, being a resort with a mall and other facilities, and you move forward with a goal in mind that is reenforced by the environment, characters, and hostiles. We see a flowing history of actions from the Union Plaza staff that paints a fairly vivid picture of the workplace structure and functions of the resort. We even make our way to the staff quarters, where we see the same messages sent from one terminal and received by another, which gives placement to the faceless and unseen characters while also further grounding and illustrating their actions. Then, the second half of the game comes. We have geared to looking further at the fungi and what actually happened regarding it, the canal, and the Prism staff. I don't really know what it is, but the experience with the terminals this time around, both with regard to the messages and the new diaries, it just felt less engaging. I read all the terminals in my playthrough, as I didn't want to miss anything. Despite that, all I really recall from the Prism terminals and their storytelling was info about the fungi, the canal, the entities, and the words of people becoming devout for the fungi and canal. I think it's that I didn't really get a good idea of Prism and its people. I get that this was probably meant to be because everyone was being infected by the fungi and those who weren't were trying to stop it. I would be willing to dismiss it if I didn't feel like I had less connection to the people of Prism as a whole. I just couldn't construct and ground a good picture of it in my mind like I did with Union Plaza and its staff. Maybe I just missed the point or something didn't get through my thick skull, but that's how the experience went for me. (Sorry for the long amendment lol.)Show moreShow less

11.7 hours at review135 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

06/21/2026

As one of the people that have been following this project for 10+ years, I was incredibly excited to see it finally come out - but, to my disappointment, there's honestly just very little to the final product, other than some admittedly very, very well done audio & visual styling. 1. The enemies (all *two* of them) are very simplistic - they see you, they walk towards you, you run to a hole where they can't get you out of. You can also (temporarily) stun them with your handheld. And that is literally the entire extent of your ability to interact with them, and their ability to interact with you. 2. Functionally no "mechanics" to speak of - while your handheld does allow you to "interact" with a small handful of very specific objects in the environment, these interactions are all entirely scripted, and most of these mechanics are used once or twice to progress through a particular area/puzzle, and then literally never used again. There are no "items", no inventory, and no alternative ways to approach any of the puzzles in the game - so there are no choices to make, and no "emergent gameplay" of any sort in general. 3. Very little in the way of a story - there are some logs to read, and a small handful of cutscenes to watch, but there's no particularly satisfying reveal or resolution, and that stretched all the way to the actual ending of the game for me (I genuinely had that awkward feeling of "no way, is this really the ending?" when it finally arrived.) There's some teasing of more interesting/otherworldly things going on behind the scenes, but nothing meaningful comes of any of it, just the aforementioned logs and a blurry video or two. 4. Very uneven visual variety - the first half of the game is fine in this regard, with a lot of fun and varied retro visuals to give the game color and character, but the second half just turns into a total slog of muddy grays, browns, and greens, which one would probably get lost in during all of the backtracking, if the levels weren't so small and linear on top of it. The game, as a whole, feels like one of those Chilla's Art/Puppet Combo type experiences, just with far higher production quality - the things that *are* in the game look and sound very "crunchy", having obviously been given an excruciating amount of polish, but the actual *volume* of what you get to experience in this game is incredibly small, totaling up to 2 enemies, ~4 levels, and a few voiced-over cutscenes. No difficulty settings, alternate endings, or anything else to warrant a second playthrough, either - you play it once, and you have seen literally everything there is to see. Probably a fine value for the money if you can get it on sale, but I don't think I would pay more than $20 for it.Show moreShow less

15.6 hours at review79 people found this helpful

Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.