Video Game / ROUTINE

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ROUTINE is a first-person Science Fiction Survival Horror game and the debut title of Lunar Software (a team of 3 core developers). Revealed at Gamescom way back in 2012 with a release schedule of 2013, the game would unfortunately end up spending several years in Development Hell, going through multiple new release dates that it ultimately failed to meet, and even switching engines twice in order to keep up with evolving hardware. It wouldn't be until 2020 when work would resume in earnest with publisher Raw Fury, and in 2022 a new trailer was shown once again at Gamescom re-revealing the game to the world. At long last, it was finally released for Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on December 4th, 2025, twelve long years after it was originally supposed to.

Set in a tourist resort on the surface of the moon, the player assumes the role of an unnamed cosmonaut who wakes up after a week in isolation only to find the place deserted. Assisted by their trusty Cosmonaut Assistance Tool (CAT), the player must explore the empty corridors while contending with hostile robots and malfunctioning systems as they attempt to discover exactly what went wrong and why. However, there may be something more horrifying lurking within the dark.

Previews: Original Gamescom 2012 Teaser Trailer,👁 Image
2013 Alpha Gameplay Trailer,👁 Image
2016 Release Date Trailer,👁 Image
2022 Re-Reveal Trailer,👁 Image
2025 Release Window Trailer,👁 Image
2025 Release Date Trailer,👁 Image
Launch Trailer.👁 Image

This game contains examples of:

• The '90s: The game takes place in an alternate 1999, where mankind has colonized the moon and advanced technology such as semi-autonomous robots are readily available.
• Abandoned Area: Many of the areas the player visits while exploring the Union Plaza moon resort are devoid of human life by the time they get there, with it being up to you to find out exactly what happened and where everybody went. The PRISM facilities the player finds himself in the second half of the game are similarly desolate, except for the lone Humanoid Abomination stalking the area.
• Absurdly Short Level: Chapter 3 is the shortest chapter, revolving solely about shutting down the A.S.N. network.
  • The moon walk in Chapter 5 is also sadly very short. After hours in cramped hallways with enemies, being out in the open on the lunar surface is awe inspiring.
• All for Nothing: After everything he goes through to stop the A.S.N., the Software Engineer's actions do not save any survivors (even if any of the Union Plaza staff somehow managed to avoid the Type-5s by barricading themselves in their rooms, they would have died when the life support shut off once the A.S.N. was shut down, and even if they somehow managed to survive that they'd still die in a few weeks max of the EL9 infection), and the Software Engineer himself ultimately walks into the Canal never to be seen again.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Type-5 androids at Union Plaza have seemingly all gone on the fritz, and will attack anyone they come across with the intent to kill. The EL9 infestation that was brought from the PRISM facility corpse to Union Plaza is what triggered the lockdown. As it turns out, the Automated Security Network is trying to contain an outbreak and is in fact working as intended.
  • It becomes a weird Pet the Dog for the A.S.N., the first terminal screen the software engineer can read upon reaching it is cluttered with windows saying "DUTY", "PROTECT", "LIFE", and "INFECTED", and in what might be a cry for mercy "PLEASE" and "STOP." One final driving in of the nail, the bottom right corner of most terminals have a CAT sync button, which allows the CAT to run a diagnostic on the terminal. Doing so in the A.S.N. core will show it's suffering no errors.
• Air-Vent Passageway: A few times, the player will be forced to get down on their belly and crawl through vents in order to get around obstacles.
• Aliens Love Human Food: Inverted, a mere apple is apparently lethal to the lunar mammals, as Entity B found out the hard way.
• Alternate History: In this universe, history diverged in the 20th century to the point where humanity has developed advanced technology such as robots and AI by the late '90s, and has even established a tourist resort on the moon.
• Ambiguous Situation: In contrast with the first half, a lot details of the second half of the game are left ambiguous. What the relationship between Entity A and Entity B is (mother and child or mates). Whether the hallucination / memory of the fetus in the octagonal space, with Entity B watching over it is her child or Entity A. Whether the psychic influence of the Canal is independent of the EL9 infection or tied to it. Whether Entity B might be a female researcher who previously missing in the Canal and has returned as a mother.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Battery recycling bins can be found throughout the base, filled with used batteries. If your CAT is out of power, you can retrieve a used battery from these bins, giving your CAT a single charge of power. Since shooting fuse boxes with the CAT is required to progress at several points, this prevents you from softlocking the game if you somehow manage to use up every single regular battery laying around the level.
• Apocalyptic Log: Various, in the first half of the game it's through emails between the Union Plaza staff. In the second half, the diary entries and audio logs of the Ward personnel. Chillingly, using the CAT to check on your objectives before the final chapter shows the Engineer has inadvertently written one out of their mission objectives, with the last entry saying they hear the Canal calling to them, and they need to be "Together."
• Apartment Complex of Horrors: The residential level qualifies, with roaming murderous Type-05 robots, an eerie atmosphere, and littered with signs of violence.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: If we can assume the following two to be son and mother of the same species. While Entity A is human-like enough despite plenty of the differences from the Homo Sapiens, his mother Entity B is much more reminiscent of a mammal ostrich with her long neck and lengthy arms. The thing that emerges from the Canal in the climax defies this even further, looking like a full astronaut suit rather than either of the other creatures.
• Botanical Abomination: The moon happens to house an infectious fungal life form - code named EL9 - that happens to assimilate affected people into its sort of a Hive Mind (the player ends up directly hearing the PRISM founder Williams' voice due to the infection). The infestation of the 1970s used to be isolated to the PRISM facilities until the spores were inadvertently brought into Union Plaza two decades later.
• But Thou Must!: In the Ward, after aligning the prongs and preparing to enter the Canal, the Engineer is tasked to go to a "preparation" terminal. There, they're presented with a choice between releasing amniotic brine liquid — and the options are "Yes" and "Yes." There is no other way to progress the plot, and a prior hallucination / ghostly memory heavily suggests they are well under the effects of the EL9 infection and are being controlled by the fungus into doing so.
• Cassette Futurism: Despite taking place in an alternate 1999, the game is still very much an '80s vision of the future, with boxy CRT monitors and literal cassette tapes in use. It's taken further with the second half of the game, which takes place on a lunar base built in The '70s with even more retro stylings.
• Can't Use Stairs: As both Bathos and a potential Jump Scare, the first IC you meet lets out a shriek of despair when it finds a ladder. Since it can't go down with you, you're forced to leave it behind.
• Central Theme: Motherhood and rebirth. Conception and egg-based imagery is everywhere, with the first shot of the game being a Match Cut between the moon's surface and cellular division. The A.S.N. is like the "mother" of the station, trying to keep things under lockdown so humans are no longer harmed by EL9. The second half of the game is spent escaping a Human Alien monstrosity that wants revenge for the death of its mother. The final reveal is that the protagonist has become completely subsumed by EL9, becoming a thrall under its control. The trippy ending sequence implies that the player is reborn as a consciousness within EL9's Hive Mind.
• Climax Boss: More like Climax Puzzle, really, but finally reaching the A.S.N. and shutting it down is a laborious, multi-stage process that becomes harder as the lights dim and flicker. It's far from the end of things, though as the game gets weirder and more mysterious as it becomes clear that the killer robots were merely a symptom of what was happening. The player is also only half-way through the game at this point.
• Closed Circle: Union Plaza is isolated in a number of ways: it's a moonbase, making leaving to safety impossible without suffocating, the ASN has cancelled all inbound and outbound flights, and it has locked down entire sections of the base. And finally, the software engineer needs to shut down the ASN for any chance of survival and rescue.
  • Later it's deconstructed. The second half of the game is in the Ward and Annex, and while at first it seems to be a repetition of the first half of the game (open doors, escape) it's actually the EL9 fungus influencing the software engineer to go to the Canal. If the software engineer hadn't been infected, he could have stayed in Union Plaza after shutting down the ASN and called for help, instead he willingly goes to an inescapable fate.
• Decontamination Chamber: One puzzle in the Annex requires rediscovering the formula for a decontaminating agent to clear out the EL9 fungus. Sadly, it only seems to work on surfaces, and does nothing to help cure someone already infected — which was everyone.
• Diegetic Interface: There is no HUD, and everything is done through interactions with terminals, items in the environment and the various buttons on the CAT that control its functions.
• Distant Finale: The end of the game presents with a heavily redacted report - dated December 5h of 2025, just a day after this game's release date - that states that another search party was assembled and summoned onto the PRISM facilities in an attempt to recover lost data from the Canal expedition. Almost all contact was lost with the team as soon as they landed and entered the Ward as well, and the only surviving transmission from the team consists of a single photo of the Canal, now overgrown with the EL9 vines and flowers.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Yonic imagery is everywhere, especially in the second half of the game.
  • There are a few players that have drew parallels between the Canal and the female reproductive system. That voice notes in-game compare the moonquakes to "contraction events" only makes the comparison closer.
  • The Canal can only be opened prying into it with two prongs, akin to gynecological medical routines. Similarly, the video that PRISM employees are shown after coming back from the Canal depicts the viewer as emerging from a dark tunnel, just like the process of being birthed.
  • The walls that house breaker switches in the Ward look very similar to that of an open vagina. For that matter, the title of the location is meant to draw comparisons to a literal maternity ward.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Routine" as in "routine inspection", as well as the reproductive routine of EL9.
• Downer Ending: Ultimately, the Engineer's attempts to escape the facility fail. Their exposure to EL9 is too severe, and in spite of dealing with Entity A, they are still possessed by the fungus and compelled to walk into The Canal. They never return. The final cutscene explains that another team was sent to investigate the lunar base 26 years later, only to all disappear as well. The only benefit to the ending seems to be that the Canal, and EL9 in general, seems content to remain on the Moon and not bother Earth.
• Eldritch Location: The Canal is a subterranean fissure in the moon which descends into... something. The entrance to the Canal alone shows evidence of extant life on the moon, and also causes video recording equipment to fail. Scientists studying the entrance of the Canal are abruptly compelled to enter it; one who went completely inside was never seen again, and one who was quickly pulled out by tether looked as though he had somehow been rapidly and severely dehydrated and died in a few hours. PRISM was founded to study the Canal, seeing it as the next big leap forward in humanity's scientific understanding, and were all ultimately destroyed by it. When the player is compelled to enter the Canal at the end of the game, they see a vast blue chamber with dozens if not hundreds of piles of matter (likely human bodies) on which the Canal's EL9 fungal life form are blooming, as well as a duplicate of the A.S.N. core in the center from which a third Entity, which the player sees as a mirror image of themselves, emerges.
• Empty Room Psych: There are a few rooms throughout the game that serve no purpose. There are empty sleeping quarters in Union Plaza with no lights or active terminals with lore. They at best serve as locations to hide from the Type-5 androids. In the Ward and Annex, there are various areas of the facility that have no lore items, recordings, or terminals. Like a branching corridor leading nowhere in the passageway to the Canal, or the darkened laboratory in the Annex.
• The Engineer: The player is a Software Engineer who's been sent to the moon by Corporate to take a look at unusual behavior from Union Plaza's A.S.N. master computer. At many points in the game you'll be required to restore partial functionality to various malfunctioning base systems.
• Enter Solution Here: As the base is on lockdown, there are multiple doors and terminals that require you to first find the correct access code in order to open/use them. The codes are randomized per playthrough.
• Eternal Recurrence: The cyclic nature of the events in the game is implied by The Player Character sharing the same voice actor as the PRISM Founder William Davis who himself ventured to The Canal, the Epilogue chronicling efforts of another search party being sent to investigate only to not return, as well as the monit of "Chapter 1: Re-Birth" popping up on the screen before the credits roll.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The matter of whether any sort of human morality can be applied to the creature in question aside, Entity A clearly cares for his mother Entity B, and this does get put in display as the player is about to leave the PRISM Ward to the canal when it embraces the "screen" playing back footage of Entity B's deceased corpse.
  • An environmental detail in the Annex, there is a broken wall to the decontamination chamber, showing metal bars bent inwards. It's likely Entity A tried to break through to get to the remains of Entity B.
• Featureless Protagonist: You never see your character's face, nor are you ever given their name (they left it blank on their arrival card), and the one time they're discussed specifically in an email they're referred to with gender-neutral pronouns (though this is likely just because the email writer didn't know specifically who was being sent). However, their breathing and pain sounds are distinctly male, John's IC calls him "Mister", and they're voiced by the same person who voiced PRISM founder William Davis.
• First-Person Ghost: Averted. Not only can you see your entire body when looking down, early on in the game a terminal tasks you with logging in with your ID number, for which you have to literally look down at your ID card slotted into your spacesuit's chest to find it.
• Fission Mailed: After draining the cistern in the sewers of the second PRISM facility, the player ends up getting seemingly grabbed by the leg by Entity A just as he reaches the ladder, but the player simply gets up after receiving a flashback involving Entity B watching over an infant Entity A.
• Flower Motifs: Hollyhocks, specifically a looping sequence of them blossoming.
• Foreshadowing: There are three movies for rent in Galaxy Video, copies of which can be found through the Living Quarters and Union Plaza, and all are evocative of future plot elements. They are "Bloom" with an image identical to the blooming Hollyhock flower in the Ward and Annex, "Duo / Oud" the game ends with the Software Engineer assimilated by the Canal, and seeing a copy of himself emerge superimposed with a creature similar in complexion to Entity A but with a human build emerge from an ASN-like computer core / uterus, and "You are beneath me" the Canal, Ward and Annex are all literally beneath the lunar surface, and that's where the Software Engineer goes in the end of the game.
  • The booklets and pamphlets around Union Plaza and the Living Quarters include "Managing your expectations", a pamphlet about birth control and family planning. The second half of the game deals with the mysterious assimilation and rebirth of the PRISM researchers and software engineer. Another one is a brochure for "ELX", a palliative treatment for an incurable disease. The source of the disease in Union Plaza and was the EL9 fungus, an incurable disease that you can only "survive" by joining a Hive Mind in the Canal. The similarity goes deeper in that "X" is also being the Roman numeral for 10, which would make it EL10.
• Found Footage: Most of the video logs are in this style. Shaky hand-captured footage, loud and distorted audio, poor picture quality and lots of film grain. Justified since the technology of the era wouldn't exactly be great, especially since Union Plaza seems to be behind the times
• Fun with Acronyms: The Cosmonaut Assistance Tool, or CAT for short.
  • The Ultraview Module uses ultraviolet light to let you see hidden messages and fingerprints.
• Garden of Eden: There is a dead apple tree in the Ward, and Entity B, which was female, was tempted by an apple. Unlike Eve, she died choking on it, and the male Entity A remained "innocent" (childlike and violent) but desperately lonely.
• Kick the Dog: Besides killing the station's human staff to contain the EL9 infection, the hostile Type-5 robots also seem to be destroying the friendly IC robots as well including the one who helps you access the Mall even though this doesn't have any clear relation to their primary goal. Later on it turns out an IC robot can be jury rigged to help override the access terminal that opens the door to access the A.S.N. for shutdown, so that might be why.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The game steps away from evading murderous robots right into Cosmic Horror with strong themes of birth and motherhood — especially once you shut down the ASN and find yourself facing off against an organic enemy instead of a bot.
• Hallucinations: A symptom of EL9 infection. Notably they start after seven days of infection, which is the time the software engineer spent in quarantine. However, the PRISM staff believe they are instead Transferable Memories shared by those connected by the Canal.
• Hazmat Suit: The project PRISM staff wore these, however they don't seem to have stopped the EL9 contamination, as a few mostly empty suits with can be found in the Ward and Annex with fruiting fungal bodies growing out of them.
  • The Engineer's space suit also doesn't seem up to the task, or they were infected while in isolation before the game. They start coughing midway through exploring Union Plaza, and eventually willingly enter the Canal.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Hugo, Cooper's IC robot who Cooper wired into the A.S.N. entryway terminal to override it, tells you to shoot him in order to short out the terminal so you can gain entrance to the A.S.N. and stop its rampage.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Type-5 robots and the faulty A.S.N. network controlling them are not the only worry the player has to contend with. After shutting down the A.S.N. in Union Plaza, the second half of the game has the player explore through the lunar PRISM facility that used to be operational in The '70s while avoiding a tall, grotesque creature with arms coming out of its chest cavity, having invisibility powers, and manners reminiscent of an immature child, code named "Entity A".
• Incurable Cough of Death: YOU, the Software Engineer, suffer this. It's your clue that you've been infected at least since you stepped out of isolation. You may have been wearing a space helmet most of the game, but spores must have gotten to you before you put it on, when you were still waking up.
• Interface Screw: Some electrical interference messes up the CAT's screen and the player has to press a button on the device itself to degauss it.
• In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: Averted, all the spacesuit helmets are reflective.
• Invisible Monster: Entity A is able to render himself invisible to human eye, forcing you to rely on the audio cues (footsteps or a Drone Of The Dread whenever he's nearby) or the CAT's camera.
• Jump Scare: In the Annex, after you think you've left Entity A behind in the Ward, it will pop its head through a window as you reach out to grab an ID card. Later, before leaving for the Canal, it will come out of nowhere and grab the Engineer just after turning on the power for the airlock and force them to turn on a video of their mother dying.
• Justified Save Point: Save points are presented as wireless connection points—projections on walls that allow you to sync your CAT and access your PDA.
• Killer Robot: The Type-5 androids have since turned homicidal following the disaster due to serious technical malfunctions. They now roam the corridors and will attack and attempt to kill anyone they lay their mechanical eyes on, including you.
• Symbolism: All over the place, but most prevalent after shutting down the A.S.N. The software engineer hallucinates being on the lunar surface, with the full size A.S.N. core disconnected and laying there like a discarded heart. What ends the hallucination and starts the next section of the game is walking up to and seeing a mechanical koi fish which is flapping in the airless void. The literal Fish Out of Water becoming a figurative one when the protagonist enters the Annex and Ward, locations that haven't seen human habitation in over twenty years and steeped in their own mystery and tragedy. The symbolism around the disconnected A.S.N. core becomes one of rebirth at the end of the game. It's likely that he is hallucinating it again when he enters the Canal and sees it there, and a copy of the software Engineer emerges from it (with a superimposed version that looks similar to Entity A).
• The Mall: Union Plaza is very reminiscent of malls in the 80s and 90s. It has stores, fountains, a video rental, and an arcade. It doesn't seem to have been doing particularly well financially before the events of the game though, as many stores can be seen to have drastic price cuts.
• Master Computer: The A.S.N., though stylistically it's made to look and feel like a heart. When arriving to the computer core, there is a "thumping" sound, and an expanding red wave of light with the periodicity of a heartbeat. The area itself is arranged to look vaguely like a cavity, with a depressed cone with the large round A.S.N. in the center, having large artery-like tubes coming out of it, and initially lit by red laser light. The way to get to it? A red, oval shaped corridor reminiscent of an blood vessel.
• Menu Time Lockout: Averted. Using the save points doesn't pause the game, and since some enemies patrol near save points, a mistimed use can get the Engineer killed. Similarly there is no Pause, using the main menu in the open is tantamount to just standing in the open.
• More than Mind Control: Those infected by the EL9 have been compelled to reach The Canal, possibly a sign of the fungal life form's assimilation.
• Mook Chivalry: Due to technical issues, the Automatic Security Network can only activate one T5 at a time. The paranoia comes from not knowing which one of the unmoving robots is going to come to life to kill you.
• Never Found the Body:
  • Computer logs you read in Union Plaza indicate the Type-5s are stuffing anyone that they kill into body bags, which they presumably dispose of, which accounts for why you never find any dead human bodies despite the fact the Type-5s have clearly gone on a murderous rampage, other than John Cooper's body, who apparently died of his EL9 infection just outside the A.S.N. core (where robots are restricted from entering) before he could manage to shut it down.
  • Averted in the Ward, where you can find the bodies of the PRISM personnel, long since converted into EL9 fungal mass. However, the number of bodies you find is much lower than the number of personnel you know were stationed at the base, and a few logs suggest the remaining personnel eventually were compelled to walk into the Canal by their EL9 infection.
• No Backwards Compatibility in the Future: Averted. The CAT is a piece of modern technology from 1997+ in the setting, but the security module from the 1970s is able to both physically plug in fine and integrate into the CAT. Further, the CAT can use the wireless sync points in the Ward and Annex without issue.
• No Biochemical Barriers: The EL9 infection is capable of affecting the mind of humans and killing terrestrial life. Throughout the game we see it's incredibly virulent, able to infect a person despite wearing a spacesuit and being in quarantine. It's also suggested that when Entity B died, her blood killed the apple tree in the Ward, as documents show it died of severe dehydration (a symptom for humans).
  • Entity B herself died by choking on an apple.
• Not the Intended Use: An in-universe example, the CAT's manual warns to not use its maintenance module onto the chest area of the Type-5 droids to prevent their malfunction. Naturally, whenever you're being chased by one of these robots, you can stun them by discharging the maintenance module twice^note firstly stripping off their chest armor plating, then hitting the exposed core at their chest area.
  • Later in the game you'd also get an Interface Module for CAT, operating which involves a flash and whose manual warns to not aim it at a person's eyes. Guess how you are be able to stun Entity A?
• Not What It Looks Like: Chances are Entity A wasn't initially hostile to the PRISM staff when it first showed up at the ward, but witnessing the apparent "tortured and butchered" remains of Entity B within the Annex - which was in fact an already deceased corpse that went through an autopsy - gave him the wrong impression that started wiping out the PRISM staff that haven't ventured themselves onto the Canal, and he only gets to learn the truth of what really happened to Entity B through a video The Software Engineer plays back just before the latter leaves for The Canal.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: At least one of the Union Plaza staff in the Living Quarters, likely Kei, somehow managed to take out at least 3 of the Type-5 droids there. The player can't even manage to permanently disable one of these bots with the tools you have on hand.
• Offscreen Teleportation: It's strongly implied that Entity A is capable of short-range teleportation, possibly as a side-effect of his invisibility. He somehow manages to follow you from the Ward to the Annex, which requires a brief moonwalk, and even follows you back to the Ward a third time.
• One-Way Visor: Although it's never visible in first-person, the helmet on the player character's spacesuit completely obscures their face.
• Patient Zero: Entities A and B have carried and propagated the EL9 spores after they found themselves at the PRISM Ward.
  • In the present, John Cooper came in contact with the EL9 spores just from being in the vicinity of the body found after the lunar quake, and brought it onto the station.
• Roaming Enemy: Entity A is notably not tethered to the player's general area (unlike the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation), and will roam the entire base randomly. You can get through the chapter(s) barely running into it, or have it chasing you almost the entire time, purely based on chance. Further, since the doors in the Ward require power to stay open, it's possible to temporarily quarantine Entity A in a given wing or section.
  • The Type-05's zig zag this trope. The A.S.N. can only operate one at a time, and there are several in any given map. When active, they patrol a given route looking for the Engineer. The A.S.N. will typically activate the one nearest to you, or do so seemingly randomly if it can't locate the player. Unfortunately, they can operate doors, so closing them behind you only affords a few extra seconds of stealth.
• Robot Buddy: The IC robots were designed to be this. They're a short, stubby thing that looks like a walking original Apple Macintosh with cute little eyes and a very primitive voice synthesizer.
• Sleepwalking: A symptom of EL9, and possibly exposure to the Canal. Researchers in project PRISM were reporting being inside the Ward, and then gaining consciousness outside the Canal wearing space suits. This also explains the sudden area change from the ASN computer core to the Ward. There's a hallucination after shutting down the ASN, and the Engineer is suddenly in the Ward.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: The player is kept in a mandatory seven day isolation period upon arriving in Union Plaza, and therefore completely misses out on the ASN going rogue and killing most if not all of the facility's human occupants, leaving them to explore a completely depopulated station trying to piece together what happened.
• So Last Season: The Ultraview module for your CAT you get in the Mall lets you see the fingerprints on touch monitors, showing you what the keypad passwords on those computers are. This doesn't work in the Living Quarters or in the Ward; the staff in the Living Quarters were aware of the fingerprints issue with the Ultraview and could be assumed to have regularly cleaned their monitors, while the Ward has been abandoned for more than 2 decades and any fingerprints would likely have dissolved, plus the Ward staff seem to be wearing full body PPE gear as uniforms which would prevent them from leaving fingerprints anyway. The most that module sees use in the Ward involves finding the symbols that make up the ciphered PIN code for the gate to the Vestibule next to the bathroom. It does however have a stronger flashlight than the security module, so there is some utility in using it for exploration in the late game.
  • Using it in the airlock to the Canal, and in the commons area of the Ward, will reveal someone drew blooming Hollyhock flowers.
  • The initial module that is built into the CAT, which allows shorting out Type-5 robots and activating circuit boxes, isn't used again after the first half of the game. While it does surprise Entity A, firing it at him is not anywhere as effective as using the security module.
• Space Is Noisy: Averted, the sound is heavily muffled except for the player character's breathing on the surface of the moon when traveling back and forth between the PRISM Ward and the PRISM Annex in the second half of the game.
• Spoiler Cover: The plants blooming out of the Cosmonaut's body foreshadows the Assimilation Plot inducted by the EL9 fungal lifeform that have affected the staff of PRISM and then eventually the player.
• Tempting Apple: Implied. The dead apple tree in the Ward was once alive and fruitful. During the 70's, Entity B tried to eat an apple and choked to death. In the present, there are a few dried up apples at the base of the tree.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Persistent audio/visual hallucinations affect the victims of the infection — you included. In the end, it's implied the clone of the player in the ending is a grotesque thing just like Entity A, but the infection shows it as a carbon copy of the Software Engineer, spacesuit and all.
• Trashy Tourist Trap: Union Plaza has a lot of elements of one. The main selling point of the base is the mall, which even taking into account the events of the game, looks run down and claustrophobic. The residential wing and the mall don't have a single window looking out onto the lunar surface, at best having fake jungle themed displays with plants with a blue background behind. Half the shops in Union Plaza are closed down, and those still open are all giving massive discounts. Even O'Neill Electronics, with the best selling item on the base, was doing so at a discount. The residential wing and isolation rooms at the space terminal are only equipped with a single flavor of drink and food, and there's no visible food court, and the vending machines are just sparkling water. Considering the seven day isolation period just to get in, it's a wonder it was ever profitable.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: In the name of immersion and realism, many traditional game design elements have been completely eschewed.
  • The player has no access to a heads up display whatsoever. No objective markers are provided, and this even includes things like health and the CAT's battery power. There's no map that the player can pull up, and even accessing collected files requires a wireless access point. This means that stumbling across a keycode requires the player to memorize it, or go back to a save point and check the CAT's notes function manually.
  • Speaking of the CAT, many elements of its design are deliberately cumbersome. The LED battery indicator is difficult to see in dim or dark lightning, which can make it difficult to check the battery power at times. The CAT also has a monitor screen for aiming, but said screen is a low refresh rate monitor, fitting for the Cassette Futurism setting.
  • One of the very first puzzles requires the player to sign into either the apartments or the mall by scanning a keycard. Where can this keycard be found? Already pinned to your chest, which means the player just needs to look down to see it.
• Used Future: Most of the equipment and technology at Union Plaza looks very cheaply made, and even "newer" technology such as the CAT appears second-hand. The developers stated that this was intended, as they wanted the moon base to have the appearance of a tacky and outdated British shopping precinct that had seen better days.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Entity A is much faster than the Type-5 robots, is much more responsive to loud footsteps and other noises, kills you instantly instead of needing to grab you twice like the Type-5s do, and can turn invisible. Facing them represents a considerable spike in difficulty, particularly in the narrow more linear corridors of the Annex where you have much less room to evade and take alternate paths around them unlike in the much more wide-open Ward.
• Was Once a Man: A possible implication is that Entity B might have been Edith after undergoing a massive transformation by whatever transpired in The Canal, which explains the human-like qualities of her offspring Entity A.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The Type-5 robots and Entity A are both unable to bend down, making them unable to reach you if you simply hide underneath a table. What's jarring is that the Type-5s are shown as being able to bend down in video files, where one is seen stuffing a killed tourist into a body bag. However, they can still grab you if your body is partially sticking out of the table.
  • The Type-05's are vulnerable to the electric pulses of the CAT, a commonly sold item on Union Station. The weakness isn't too severe though: it's not enough to deactivate one and they will reset after a few seconds, they have a tendency to both dodge and protect their core with a hand to block the pulse. And finally they have an ablative chest piece protecting it which will block one use.
  • Entity A on other hand, is fully phased by a camera flash from the CAT's security attachment, and doesn't seem cognizant enough to use a hand to shield it's eyes while going up to the software engineer.