Hey all, Aaron Foster here from Lunar Software.
Today, I would like to talk a bit about some of the important people who helped make ROUTINE special.
While Lunar Software is a core team of three, many wonderful individuals generously gave their time and expertise to help us reach the finish line.
We truly could not have done it without them, and today, I would like to highlight just a few of those contributors.
▌01 . NARRATIVE ▌
■ Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you worked on in ROUTINE?
• A: Hello! My name is Shirley. I write with a mix of sci-fi, horror, mystery, and humor. I’m the lead writer on ROUTINE and contributed to the lore, character backgrounds, and in-game material within Lunar Software’s wondrous world set on the Moon. My other credits include dialogue in Brainwash Gang’s delightful Friends vs Friends and my independently published short stories.
Overall, I am a casual person who likes to watch TV, play games, and listen to funk music.
■ Q: What motivated you to work as a writer?
• A: The short story is: I’ve always felt I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a while to fully meet the moment.
The long story is: One day, my mom came home with a laminated desk calendar that came with an erasable pen. It was an out-of-date promotional item from somewhere, but the back was blank. My sisters and I would make comics for each other on it. I loved reading their comics and then hearing them laugh as they read mine. Since then, I have continued to covet that emotion of how it feels to share art.
As I studied graphic design and photography in college, I worked in a part-time accounts payable job. After graduating, I eventually continued to work in accounting for many years. Long workdays and commutes provided me time to notice the mystery and beauty in everyday things, like watching an elevator get repaired or seeing someone straighten out their jacket in front of the wavy reflection on the side of a bus stop vestibule. These things acted as prompts for my stories. I’d think of plots while waiting on the train platform and jot down ideas all the way home.
While I would dream of working in storytelling every day, it took several years of poking around my brain and trying things out on my personal time before I felt like I got to know my own voice. Working on independent projects helped me build a portfolio and website to show potential collaborators what I’m all about.
My journey to working as a writer was kind of like Snorlax finally getting up.
■ Q: What was the most challenging, memorable, or engaging thing you worked on in ROUTINE?
• A: It’s hard to pinpoint the most memorable thing from working on ROUTINE because it was all so noteworthy. Just meeting with the people I had the chance to work with from Lunar Software and Raw Fury was such a treat. The time that stood out most was during one of the first meetups when Aaron and Jemma talked about the history of their game and walked me through their enchanting environments. Getting a chance to see and listen to all of the details set off sparks of inspiration in multiple directions, and I wanted to follow them all. They offered me their time and minds to bounce ideas off of theirs, and the collaboration was intoxicating.
In ROUTINE, it was important to leave room for both plausibility and mystery in specific events and in the overall narrative timeline. As I delved into researching the logistics, my challenge was gauging the balance of how far to go with an idea and when to zoom out. Aaron and Jemma set up a comprehensive way for me to pause, note, and pivot if need be. We could access it asynchronously and also pull it up to discuss while we met. It melded well with all of our other documents and helped make sure everything was cohesive with the established vibe and other content in the game.
Lunar Software built this fictional world in such a realistic way that I found myself deeply engaged with the intricacies that might exist in it: a snack menu ordering card in The Mall, a laundry price list in the Living Quarters, pondering what type of building material or ledger paper would be used [spoiler] in the first part of the game versus the second [/spoiler]. I wrote a little sing-along song I imagined Union Plaza visitors would participate in that the iC voices a snippet of in the game. I still sing it to myself sometimes and cherish the memories of working on the game together.
■ Q: Do you have a favourite game, movie, or book?
• A: Tough to choose just one for each! Here is my best attempt at culminating my faves:
Game: Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Movie: Clue (1985)
Book: Under the Skin by Michel Faber
■ Q: And finally, where can people read more of your work?
• A: Thank you for asking! You can read more of my work on my website: https://auntiepesto.com/short-stories/
I’m on Bluesky as auntiepesto and Instagram as shirleypesto.
▌02 . AUDIO ▌ ■ Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you worked on in ROUTINE?
• A: HI! Riccardo here, speaking for Hex Archive. I work as a sound designer and business developer for the studio, while Enrico is the CEO (and sound designer), and Davide is a fellow external partner we have, managing audio implementation through Unreal and Metasound work.
Hex Archive is the sound design studio we founded in 2022, strongly focusing on game audio. We have collected a fair amount of works until then, but ROUTINE has surely been one of the most peculiar.
In this game, we handled all the audio work for the C.A.T. tool, Entity A, and several other tasks, like a few environmental sounds, for example.
■ Q: What motivated you all to work in Audio?
• A:
Riccardo: At first, I wanted to work as a guitarist, but after discovering the soundtrack world in the Conservatory, I instantly fell in love with it. Videogames have always been my favourite thing in the world since I was a kid, so the transition has been pretty natural. With our first job (Enrico and I have always been working together from day one), I started learning what sound design was and got bewitched by that world too. That led me to co-found our studio and pursue that path.
Enrico: For me, it was when my passion for music crossed the path with my passion for games, and that happened in 2001, the first time I played Halo CE. At that moment, I realized how cool it was to shape an immersive and unique experience, so I decided to try and make that my job.
Davide: I started playing guitar as a kid and played in several bands. Over time, I felt the need to record myself, then my band, which pushed me towards music production. Later on, I found a way to combine that path with my passion for videogames and the technical side of audio. In the end, I just connected music, technology, and games into one job I genuinely love.
■ Q: What was the most challenging, memorable, or engaging thing you worked on in ROUTINE?
• A:
Riccardo: My favourite task was imagining a way to make Entity A’s invisible mode interesting, perceivable, and scary. I thought about using a mix of teeth and joint pops sounds, and gotta say I am pretty satisfied with the result. I think it makes a weird and unsettling choice, especially when you hear those sounds reverberating in the rooms.
Enrico: The C.A.T. was for me what I've found the most challenging, trying to convey the grounded feeling and the tactile reward of its buttons. To achieve that, I've done some research with props, finding the right ones to record, like old oscilloscopes, audio gear, and toys. I really liked the idea of simulating the sound emission mic-ing an actual small speaker, so I've used a small karaoke toy I have had since I was a kid that was perfect in terms of size and feel for the C.A.T.
Davide: Working on entity A was very challenging but also extremely rewarding. We put a lot of effort into properly fitting and implementing all the characters’ states and actions, creating a smooth, continuous flow that allowed the audio to react and adapt quickly to every situation.
■ Q: Do you have a favourite soundtrack, artist, or album?
• A:
Riccardo: Oh well, I'll just name my power three: Nobuo Uematsu, Motoi Sakuraba, and Nobuyoshi Sano. On the film side, my biggest love is Danny Elfman. If I had to choose one soundtrack, I would pick Final Fantasy 9.
Enrico: My idol is Prince, and Musicology is the album that got me into him. I love Funk music. Other than that, I would say Halo OST is my biggest influence, that being my favourite videogame.
Davide: I love metal music, and my favourite band is Angra, especially the album Angels Cry. In the videogame world, I was completely obsessed with the OST of Doom (2016), and, as a true nostalgic, I still deeply love the soundtrack of The Secret of Monkey Island.
■ Q: And finally, where can people hear more of your work?
• A: Well, we can just post our website and socials, I guess:
Website (it’ll be reworked and updated with the latest works soon, actually): https://www.hexarchive.com/guestroom
Instagram: This is my personal one; we don’t want to have a company profile. I usually post all the updates here: https://www.instagram.com/odd_engraving
Davide:
If you’re looking for more information about my work, here’s my website: www.davidecastagnone.com
If you’re looking for tutorials about the world of audio, here’s my YouTube channel:
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Shirley and Hex were an absolute pleasure to work with on ROUTINE, and we hope that was a fun read. Hopefully, we can bring you more of these developer snippets in the future.
- Aaron Foster