In the summer of 2012, ROUTINE was revealed at the largest video gaming convention in the world Gamescom, but after well over a decade later it has yet to make it into the hands of players. In the coming weeks, that’s all about to change, and as I sat down with two of the game’s three developers, Aaron Foster, head of art and design and project lead, and fellow artist and designer Jemma Hughes, it was all smiles.

“We’ll have gone gold in just a few days,” Aaron told me with a grin.

Theirs is a classic indie developer story, a handful of developers setting out to work on a project they were passionate about, learning every difficult lesson along the way.

“Routine started as a very simplified, atmospheric, slight-horror game. I started it on my own, and was actually inspired originally by the simplicity of Dear Esther,” Aaron said. “I wasn’t a programmer at the time. I was an environment artist, actually, and wanted to use my experience to make a game.

“I grew up in the 80s watching VHS's and it left a big impression on me. Now that I’m an environment artist, I’ve never stopped loving that aesthetic. I love the weathering and the hum of fluorescents and little details like that. When making Routine, I thought, ‘if I made this game in the 80s, what would I imagine it like?’ and so, sorta took that and ran with it.

“When Jemma and our programmer, Pete, came on that really opened a lot of doors for us. We started showing a few screenshots and eventually got help on audio, so that’s when we were ready to show the trailer.”

Aaron and Jemma’s environmental art chops were more than enough to catch the attention of masses, and when they released their reveal trailer in 2012, their self-published little endeavor left an impression on people. But then work on the project suddenly halted, and wouldn’t pick back up again until 2020.

“There was quite a long delay that was due to personal reasons, actually. We were dealing with almost going personally bankrupt and had to pause and work on other projects to make ends meet,” Aaron said, with the difficulty from those years apparent in his voice.

Eventually their situation improved, though, and there was still a lot of passion among their small, but mighty team to pick the project back up. However, doing so after a years-long hiatus proved no easy task. The first obstacle was that the development landscape had completely changed, including, most consequentially for their team, the tools used to make them.

“When we picked up development again, we actually had to start from scratch, because we’d worked on the game for 4 or 5 years in Unreal 3 Engine, then came back in 2020 on Unreal 5 using a completely different code – C++ instead of Unreal Scripts.”

And so the team took the opportunity to make ground up changes to Routine that spanned gameplay, art, and more. Having learned a lot from their time developing on Unreal 3, the team decided to refocus gameplay around a less combat focused design, give the story a complete overhaul, and change the way AI worked, expanding on ideas in some places and trimming back in others to bring the project more in line with the team’s renewed vision.

“When we weren’t paused, we were mostly gutting stuff that didn’t work. The C.A.T. was originally primarily a weapon. That was removed and turned into what felt more like an actual tool. You saw a lot of that in the demo you played. It even has an off button!”

The C.A.T., also known as the Cosmonaut Assistance Tool is the primary way the player interacts with the world around them. A boxy, retro-looking multitool, you pick this handy item up early on and it evolves over time as you find new modules for it. It was one of the big focuses during the rework after they started working on the game again, and Aaron’s eyes light up when he talks about it.

“We didn’t want to make a bunch of modules, so instead we decided to make each module multipurpose. For instance, the ultraview module is a blacklight, but also a flashlight, so while the other one helps you defend yourself, it doesn’t have a flashlight, so there’s more than one reason to have one module equipped at any time,” he told me.

“It also does cool things like lets you connect to terminals, so it’s kind of like your cell phone, a camcorder, a flashlight – a multitool,” Jemma added.

“There are more modules than what you’ve seen though. There’s one more later in the game. It may or may not help you defend yourself,” Aaron said with a laugh.

There were more changes beyond the C.A.T too, including a refocusing on the setting, which takes place on the moon. The moon is something of a fascination for Aaron, and something he wanted front and center. Before the pause in development, they’d increasingly built indoor environments where players couldn’t be blamed for forgetting they were on the moon at all – a state the team found unacceptable. Having played the demo recently, the moon is almost omnipresent, especially early on when they take every opportunity to shove the moon’s desolate vistas in your face.

“Narrative was also a huge change. The stuff we had before took away from the setting of the moon, we thought, and so we wanted to refocus on that,” Aaron explained. “I’ve always just been drawn to the moon. I think it looks just beautifully barren, and mysterious, and a bit creepy.”

Speaking of creepy, as you explore the space station, you’re never far away from the game’s primary threat – the Type 5 robots that attack you on sight and which cannot be dealt with using force. These heavy, metal Terminator-looking monsters are a sight to behold, and make the most alarming noises when they’re around.

“The AI got a rework too. Actually, you may not have noticed this, but the Type 5 robots are only ever active one at a time. That got changed at one point for reasons related to the narrative.”

And I’ll admit, I didn’t notice this, and actually spent minutes on end hiding from robots I had no idea were deactivated and unable to see me. Aaron and Jemma found this pretty amusing.

“Yeah, usually there’s this moment in some of the playtests where they’ll notice the robot just standing there and sort of peek out and then go ‘oh, he’s turned off’ and then you can walk right in front of them and see they don’t notice you at all,” Aaron said. “Just don’t be there when they come back on!”

When asked about the design behind these terrifying monstrosities, Aaron explained there's a completely rational explanation for why someone built them to look like the stuff of nightmares, and also for how these could exist in the same universe as the tiny, boxy helper robots you’ll find scurrying about on the same space station.

“The Type 5s are actually repurposed riot control robots from Earth, so that’s why they look intimidating and a bit scary as you saw. The purpose of the IC robots is to be helpful, so they look cute.”

When asked how Routine stands out in 2025, where we’ve enjoyed an absolute tidal wave of awesome games to play, Aaron spoke to the philosophy of letting players learn for themselves – a practice that’s less common in the age of in-game characters explaining puzzle solutions to you a few seconds after you encounter them.

“It’s just a very different kind of experience. We don’t hold your hand and make the player figure stuff out and there’s just not a lot of stuff like that out there at the moment.”

As someone who spent about 20 minutes beating my head on a single puzzle during the demo, I can attest that this is certainly true.

Before wrapping my call with the team, I paused to ask them what advice they would give to indie developers setting out to make their first game as they started to do all those years ago. Aaron’s answer came after only a second or two of thought.

“One of the most important things is just work on something you care about, regardless of scale. If you care about it, you’ll be able to see it through. We knew we wanted to finish this game and we did. It took a while, but we all cared about it, and here we are.”