Real Terrifying: Routine’s Early 80s Artifacts and Retrofuture Setting Ground its World in Believable Horror

by Matt Q 🎮 

A CRT terminal sputters awake. Beige panels scarred by years of fingerprints gleam under flickering fluorescents. A gloved hand twists a chunky analog dial on your C.A.T. tool. Your flashlight beam jitters across grimy bulkheads, revealing a robot's dark silhouette. Approaching cautiously, it seems inactive. You attempt to walk past, then suddenly you hear machinations whir to life as it convulses and starts to move towards you. 

You run. It pursues. 

You reach a dead end. It approaches swiftly. 

You clumsily attempt to aim your C.A.T. and subdue it with a shock. You manage to land a hit just before it grabs you. It momentarily convulses as it lifts you off the floor. It's arm begins to stiffen, then suddenly your life ends in a blur of metal and blood.

This is Routine: a 6-10 hour Sci-Fi survival horror where high-fidelity late-70s retro-futurism (reel-to-reel consoles, VHS-static monitors, utilitarian wear) transforms a derelict lunar outpost into a believable nightmare. No glossy sci-fi sheen; just tactile artifacts that feel handled and authentic, yet abandoned.

These realistic relics help ground the unreal: dark halls feel familiar, workspaces look lived in, piles of research papers stuffed into manilla folders enhance the ambiance.  Dread swells not from abstraction, but intimacy; the terror of a familiar space turned into a tomb. 

Lunar Software's 13-year in the making labor of love has finally materialized a 1980s "vision of the future," born from creator Aaron Foster's analog childhood of VHS-recorded Alien marathons. For Routine, Foster sought "soulful" tactility: chunky interfaces and weathered plastics over modern sterility. "If I made this in the 80s, what would it look like?" Unreal Engine 5's modern visual fidelity renders its retro relics in crisp detail for immersive nostalgia.

These 80s artifacts create a realistic and familiar environment for older gamers, but the fact that these items actually existed in real life even lend a sense of plausibility for younger gamers who haven't directly experienced Routine's retro-tech for themselves; a feat that pure futuristic Sci-Fi environments tend to lack. In Routine's case, believability breeds dread.

Beyond simple realism, Routine's tactile approach to interfaces and gameplay create an immersion seldom delivered in gaming. 

There are no quick menus. There are few checkpoints. Most of the interactions with either your C.A.T. or with the interfaces in the environment are completely manual. 

Want to save? (believe me you will)

You'll need to find a wireless access point, projected onto a wall. Then focus on your C.A.T. and aim your cursor to press the wireless connection button to bring up the menu, projected onto the wall. 

From there your own gaze controls a mouse cursor to interact with the projected display screen, either selecting "Save", viewing objectives or other data collected throughout your journey. Nothing is "easy" but everything feels the way it should. 

The interface is similar for the various computer terminals you encounter. Moving close to the terminal automatically shifts your visual control from your visor to the mouse cursor on the screen. Enabling you to control the functions of each terminal. It's one of the few transitions that is completely seamless, and like most of the gameplay in Routine it works wonderfully.

Oh, and that tactile C.A.T. interface I mentioned? You'll need to think ahead when using it.

Robots pursuing you? You'll need the module that delivers an electric shock if you want to have a chance of surviving an encounter. But if you're being pursued by other creatures? You'll need a different "module" to be active which is a completely manual process which involves you focusing on your C.A.T. then moving your cursor to select the module you want to be active. 

Think you can do that in midst of a pursuit? Think again. 

In Routine there is no pause function. If you are being chased and you don't have the right module already selected, you better just run and run fast.

All of these factors combine to create an experience that feels truly special, yet somehow familiar. Not familiar in a gameplay sense, necessarily, but familiar in an environmental sense. Except for select Sci-Fi elements, the moon base feels real, like it actually could have been built in the 70s.

After playing through Routine it makes me hope that more games will take this realistic tactile approach. Unreal Engine 5's graphic fidelity pairs perfectly with this kind of grounded tactile gameplay, and I can't wait to see what new experiences game developers deliver for us.

If you want to see beginning gameplay from Routine (captured on Xbox Series S) check out the video below:

As of this article's publication, you can play Routine on either PC or Xbox, and it's available via Gamepass.

➤See Routine on Steam

➤See Routine on Xbox

Beyond Limitations: Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1 Shows Nintendo Can Still Make Beautiful Games on Its Aging Hardware

by Matt Q 🎮 

Samus Aran touches down on a forsaken alien world. Her visor hums to life, scanning derelict hulls amid swirling sandstorms and lightning blazed skies. Alien flora pulses in iridescent blooms under stylized god rays, Samus' Morph Ball transforms seamlessly, zipping through vents and neon tipped shafts at a silky smooth 60fps. No stutters. No mud. On the original 2017 Switch, eight years into its lifecycle, this feels impossibly fluid, and looks more beautiful than it has any right to. 

Screenshot from Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1

This is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, Retro Studios' long-awaited sequel, released December 4, 2025 on both the Nintendo Switch 2 and the original Switch 1.Vast biomes unfold in vibrant, handcrafted iridescent crystalline ruins, proving fun doesn't always demand the latest and greatest next-gen horsepower.

With Switch 2 out since June, how does the Switch 1 version of Prime 4 still dazzle on its creaky silicon? Lower resolutions and textures aside, its stylized art direction, bold colors, and atmospheric mastery seem to overcome pure hardware limitations. 

But considering the development studio, this probably shouldn't be shocking. Retro Studios pulled a similar trick with the original Metroid Prime on the GameCube. Back in the day, Metroid Prime seemed to stretch beyond the limitations of the GameCube hardware, creating a visual experience that went beyond pure hardware horsepower, and took full advantage of every trick in the GameCube's arsenal to create an experience unlike anything Samus had undergone before. 

Metroid Prime on GameCube by Retro Studios - image from Retro Island Gaming

Even with Retro Studios' established pedigree, there was no guarantee Prime 4 would turn out as well as it did. After all, its extended development was filled with well documented struggles. 

Announced in 2017 as a Switch exclusive, a new entry in the Metroid Prime series was initially requested by Nintendo of America, and development was initially given to an external team (reported to be Bandai Namco), while still produced by Kensuke Tanabe (producer of the previous Prime games, and Nintendo's go-to guy for externally developed games). 

Screenshot from Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1

While there are conflicting stories as to why Retro Studios didn't just handle development from the beginning (after all, they made the first three games in the Prime series), when it became clear that work on Metroid Prime 4 wasn't going well, Nintendo transferred the project to Retro Studios. Unfortunately, Retro had to pretty much start over from scratch, and they didn't have the right team in place to make a Prime game (I'm assuming key staff moved on since the release of Prime 3 back in 2007).

Despite its development challenges, eight years since its announcement, we finally have Metroid Prime 4 in our eager hands, and its a beauty. Seeing it shine on the newly released Switch 2 isn't that surprising, but seeing how well it looks and performs on the aging Switch 1 seems like witchcraft. 

Screenshot of Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1

But perhaps it shouldn't be so shocking, since Nintendo has done this before with cross-gen releases. Back when the Wii was released, and the GameCube was starting to show its age, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which looked incredible on both the GameCube and the Wii. Nintendo opted not to have a major cross-gen game when the Wii-U released (and look how that went), but when they released the Switch in 2017, they launched with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and released it on both Wii-U and Switch.

Screenshots from IGN comparison video of Wii U vs Switch versions of Breath of the Wild

In Metroid Prime 4, however, Retro’s visual mastery shines brightest. Prime 4 rejects photorealism’s trap, embracing bold stylization: painterly skies bleed sunset hues, volumetric fog rolls in thick yet performant layers, iridescent Metroid husks shimmer with hand-tuned bloom. Baked lighting and smart texture work mask the Switch’s limits, with vibrant clarity at 60fps, whether handheld or docked.

Screenshot from Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1

Gameplay sings in harmony with art, as it plays just as good as it looks. Samus quickly and seamlessly transforms into her Morph Ball, adorned with glowing lights. Her arm cannon clearly and visually displays the currently selected weapon, with flourishes of psychic energy, fire, ice or electricity. Scanning is smooth and intuitive, and provides an added incentive to look everywhere and explore each corner and crevice. 

While the open desert area has been vocally criticized online, its not nearly as bad in practice (I mean, it's a desert for crying out loud. It's got sand, sand, and...more sand. It's not all that bad.) and driving the Samus Cycle around is a nice break from the regular gameplay.

Screenshot of Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1

Metroid Prime's visual fidelity, and overall quality, on Switch 1 begs the question... did Nintendo really need to release new hardware? 

Outside of the outstanding terra-forming action of Donkey Kong Bonanza, likely impossible on the original Switch, most of the games released on Switch 2 thus far are just ports of modern games already on Xbox and PlayStation. 

Sure, it's nice that Nintendo-only kids get to finally play an ok-looking version of Cyberpunk, but it's not too exciting for the majority of gamers - certainly not a compelling reason to buy a Switch 2.

Despite the graphical shock and awe that tends to accompany brand new consoles, I think some of the most interesting games typically come out at the end of a console's lifecycle, when developers have learned all the tricks and they utilize them to squeeze every last ounce of juice out of them. 

It begs the question: how long can the "end" of a lifecycle be stretched? 

The last high fidelity PlayStation first-party game released on PS4 was God of War Ragnarok in November 2022, two years after the launch of the PS5. 

Screenshot of God of War Ragnarok on PS4

If you count Call of Duty as a first party Xbox title these days, then the recently released Black Ops 7 is available on last gen consoles as well (although you could argue whether it classifies as "fidelity" - it's really more of a cash grab as the Xbox One S version is pretty rough). Possibly one of the most famous end of lifecycle releases was Grand Theft Auto 5 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 It was a megahit at the time, and through next gen updates continues to impress to this day. 

Personally, beyond graphic fidelity, one of my favorite features of the current generation consoles is the 1080p recording feature and the SSD-driven fast resume/ fast loading times. 

Screenshot from Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1

Certainly the extra graphical detail and ray traced lighting of current gen games looks impressive, but games like Metroid Prime 4 show that you don't need pure horsepower to create incredible looking games.

Check out the video below if you want to see Metroid Prime 4 in action:

A Light in Darkness: Keeper Shines as a Beacon of Creativity Under the Shadow of Microsoft’s Studio Eclipse

by Matt Q 🎮

A lighthouse stirs on a forsaken shore. 

There are no ships left to guide, as humans haven't been seen in centuries. After what seems like a brief eternity, there is a rumbling, a shaking. The lighthouse shifts, first gradually, almost imperceptibly, then more violently, back and forth, back-and-forth. Then without warning, its torso shatters and the upper section of the lighthouse crashes to the ground. 

Spiderly legs sprout from its base like fungal roots after rain. It wobbles forward, beam sweeping the haze, its beacon light blinks like a human eye clearing morning sleep. 

Is it...alive?

This is Keeper. Double Fine Productions' newest release, and their first game fully developed under the shade of Xbox Game Studios' umbrella. 

You may remember Double Fine from other creative outings like Costume Quest and Psychonauts, among many others.  

To understand Keeper it's helpful to understand its development studio, and more importantly the studio's founder: Tim Schafer. Tim Schafer got his first game industry job working at Lucasarts, and his first major project was The Secret of Monkey Island. Schafer became known for his storytelling and comedic style, which has carried into his works even to this day.

Schafer worked at Lucasarts until January 2000 when he left to form his own production studio: Double Fine Productions, where he created the creative platforming game Psychonauts for the original Xbox, PC and PS2.

While Psychonauts didn't sell well initially, it was critically acclaimed and eventually found commercial success.

Psychonauts on the Original Xbox

After being acquired by Microsoft, some fans feared that Double Fine might lose its creative edge, or worse. Microsoft's stewardship of acquired studios has often prioritized short-term metrics over sustained creative investment, casting a long shadow over outliers like Keeper. Since the 2019 Double Fine acquisition, fans feared similar fates for Schafer's team amid a pattern of closures and mismanagement.

For example: 

• Tango Gameworks: Closed in 2024, shortly after the acclaimed Hi-Fi Rush (2023)

• Arkane Austin: Developer of the acclaimed 2017 Prey. Shut down in 2024 following Redfall’s troubled launch (2023)

• Rare: Previously a major hit-maker for Nintendo, including seminal titles like Battletoads, Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Killer Instinct. Post-2002 acquisition, its output has largely been limited to Sea of Thieves (2018) as their one major hit.

If you want to read about Xbox's studio layoffs and closures, you can reference this excellent article from gameindustry.biz.

These closures, part of broader 1,900+ Xbox layoffs in 2024, highlight a troubling trend, even as Microsoft boasts successes like Game Pass's 25 million subscribers and consistently excellent Forza franchise entries. 

In light of this, Keeper's emergence feels like a rare triumph: Double Fine retained the autonomy to craft something strangely poetic on a modest scale, unburdened by AAA bloat.

In an industry where risks are increasingly punished, Keeper's survival underscores what's possible when a studio's funding is assured and its creative vision is protected. It's a beacon, but one that illuminates how many others have dimmed.

But for all of Microsoft's faults, the sheer range of games they make available day one on Gamepass, allowing more gamers to discover and play strange and wonderful gems like Keeper, is incredible.

Between the value price-point of the Xbox Series S, and the relatively low monthly cost of Gamepass, Xbox is still delivering one of the best deals in gaming for people who like to discover and play new and interesting games (and yes, I believe, despite the recent price increases, this combination is still one of the best deals in gaming).

So what about Keeper itself? What makes it so good?

Well... it's just so damn strange, and beautiful, and poetic.

...and it's also frustrating and sometimes obtuse, and if you don't find the optional achievements you don't get any sense of the story

...and it's freakin' cool that the only written story text is told via the in-game achievement pop-up messages

...but then it's kind of boring to just walk around as a sentient lighthouse and shine your light at things

...and just when you think you might give up then you burst apart and are reborn as a ship!

...then you transform again to become a flaming wheel of death, and end up playing some of the best Sonic the Hedgehog-type speed and loop sequences you've ever seen

...and it all culminates in a very strange climatic ending, and...

it's all so very satisfying.

Seriously, if you are the kind of person who started playing Keeper but fell off when you were still playing as a lighthouse, you should go back and just power through it. Trust me. The best is yet to come.

If you haven't had a chance to play Keeper yet, you can see some beginning gameplay in the YouTube video below:

So... this is Keeper, and I'm so very glad it exists. 

Double Fine’s surreal pilgrimage; a poetic triumph born under Microsoft’s shadow. 

In an era of studio closures and squandered talent (Tango Gameworks shuttered, Arkane Austin axed) Keeper’s existence is a rare beacon of creative freedom, amplified by Game Pass’s reach. 

But despite all of the layoffs and studio closures, I'm glad if Double Fine's Microsoft acquisition allowed Tim Schafer and team the financial backing to be able to take the time and have the creative freedom to keep making wonderfully strange games like Keeper.

Yet their success only underscores the deeper tragedy: 

Why can’t Microsoft nurture more studios to shine this brightly? 

Silenced Stable: Did the Attempt to Censor Horses Unintentionally Lead it to Critical Success?

by Matt Q 🎮

Horses is a provocative new game from Italian game production studio Santa Ragione, in partnership with Andrea Lucco Borlera - a film graduate student at Roma Tre University, examining themes of dehumanization through authoritarian control and puritanical repression. 

While leading digital storefronts Steam and Epic banned it from sale, through word-of-mouth and listing on independent storefronts like Itch.io, Horses managed to breakthrough the attempts to silence it, and has sold more than 18,000 copies since release.

Seemingly unintentionally, these attempts to silence Horses' message only ended up reinforcing and amplifying it.

But is Horses controversial enough to warrant banning it in the first place?  

Presented in stark black and white, Horses’ color palette, 4:3 screen ratio and limited audio (often presented with the droning sound of a film projector in the background), gives strong silent-film vibes.

As the player, you embody Anselmo, a young man sent to a ranch in the Italian countryside for a few weeks over the summer to “build character.” The time period isn’t specified, but it feels “old”, like it’s based in the past. Things seem innocent enough in the beginning, as you are told you will be working on a farm helping the farmer with daily tasks, but things take a dark turn almost immediately after you arrive. 

You soon discover that the farmer's prized "horses" aren't really horses at all, they are human beings with horse masks strapped to their heads and otherwise entirely naked (with blurred out pixels obscuring their genitals). There are perhaps 8 to 10 of them, all crowded together in a small gated corral. 

The way the farmer talks about them, you wouldn't know that they weren't regular everyday horses, so clearly there is something seriously wrong with the entire situation. 

There is a "dog" on the farm as well (named Fido), but as you may guess, it's also a naked human with a dog mask forcefully strapped onto its head. 

On a regular day you help with common chores around the farm like feeding Fido, gathering or watering vegetables, and taking hay to feed the "horses". You are also told to inform the farmer if you notice any of the horses fornicating, and fornicate they do. 

It actually becomes quite common that whenever you pass by the horses' pen, there is at least one pair of them going at it, although whether the sex is consensual or not is unclear. There isn't enough refinement to the animation to imply whether the act is forced or mutually desired. Whether this is a conscious design choice or a limitation of the developer's skill is seemingly unclear to the player.

There are also a few sequences where the player ends up riding one of the horses, and it's about as disturbing as you might imagine it to be. 

Another disturbing event involves the possible SA(unclear whether it's consensual or not, but seems like it's probably not) of one of the horses by Fido while the farmer watches. (The scene is even more disturbing than just that, but I think you get the general idea.) 

Then there is a sequence where you have to help the farmer castrate one of the male horses for fornicating with the female horses, and after the farmer cuts their penis off, you have to staple the wound shut. This is more horrific sounding than the actual in-game event is, since lots of things happen off camera, and the hole is very blurry and pixelated, but still... its quite disturbing.

These are not the only disturbing scenes in the game, but these were some of the most shocking from my perspective, and sure these are pretty terrible, but they aren't done in a way that glorifies it. It's horrible, you feel horrible after viewing it, and that's the entire point. 

But despite all that, is Horses really THAT controversial that it deserved to be banned from sale on Steam? 

I could see a storefront like Nintendo's not allowing it, given their (somewhat) family-friendly image (although there are a lot of questionable games on the Nintendo online store these days), but Steam has A LOT of very sexual and disturbing games that it allows on its platform. Furthermore, the initial ban decision occurred prior to the more recent decision around some sexual games being removed from Steam due to pressures from payment processing companies, and while some adult and sexual content was removed, there are still plenty of games that could be considered more objectionable and "obscene" than Horses, like...

Sex with Hilter - an Adults-only game that is exactly what you think it is. (I don't recommend looking it up on Steam unless you are prepared for a VERY NSFW trailer and screenshots.)

Ironically, the act of banning Horses seems to have just drawn more attention to it, and probably helped it sell more copies than it would have otherwise. 

While Steam is a very large and important store front, there are a lot of games that go unnoticed and never find commercial success on it, no matter how shocking they may be. If Horses had been allowed to release as originally intended, I doubt it would have garnered the attention it did, or sold as many copies as it did, due to the critical attention garnered by the Steam ban.

Personally, while I like the silent-film-esque aesthetics and brief FMV action clips, I found Horses to be only mildly disturbing and somewhat interesting. 

While I applaud the idea of making video games that are more than just pure entertainment, and start to enter the realm of critical artwork, I don't think Horses has a sharp enough point to really leave a lasting mark. 

Sure, its themes of puritanical oppression and authoritarianism are somewhat interesting, and the shock of seeing enslaved humans as "horses" is interesting at first, but the general simplistic gameplay and meaningless decision paths take away from the impact it could have had. 

To be fair though, I don't believe Horses was meant to be a well honed, expertly crafted masterpiece. The game retails for only $4.99, and it seems to deliver exactly the experience it was going for: somewhat provocative, short and disturbing. It was the first game from Borlera, and even the game studio itself is a relatively small indie operation that has only shipped a handful of titles. 

Even though I don't believe the Steam ban was justified, I believe it inadvertently helped Horses enter a level of critical dialogue and awareness that probably wouldn't have happened without it. 

After all, I chose this game for D1SC0URS' inaugural article and if it hadn't been banned on Steam and created the surrounding controversy, I probably wouldn't even know it existed.

If you want to see a bit of beginning gameplay from Horses, you can watch the YouTube clip below. It doesn't contain any of the more controversial scenes I mentioned, but it gives you a sense of the overall vibe and disturbing nature of the game.

If you are interested in experiencing Horses for yourself, you can buy Horses on Itch.io, or you can visit the official website for updates.