This is a proposed flag for a united Earth.
It is not human-centric, which almost all other proposed Earth flags are.
The colours represent sky, land, sea with the sun at the centre connecting all elements.
This also represents Air, Earth, Water, Fire.
This is the most inclusive and neutral representation of a single planet.
I imagine this is how the Great Revolution will begin:
My Steam review was 4,776 characters too long, so I'm posting the full review here.
I originally did recommend this game, adding an explanation in my review of why I almost didn't. However, after writing an extensive breakdown with a lot of suggestions on how it could have been improved, I decided to change my review. I can no longer, in good conscience, recommend ROUTINE.
It's not a bad game. It's actually quite good, but because it failed to meet its potential in such fundamental ways I now feel that it is a lost opportunity. It took my first review to reveal that to me.
The Good
When you buy ROUTINE you want to be scared, and you also want to be wowed by the original art style. It does both of these things extremely well. I'm always a fan of unique art styles (The Invincible, and The Witness to name just two) and ROUTINE really captures a unique retro "Ron Cobb's Alien" aesthetic, especially with the character's multi-tool. Not only is the multi-tool a unique concept, it is also a constant anchor for the art style. I.e. Every time you use it you're reminded of the type of world you're in. It's iconic in that way.
The enemies are also terrifying, and provide a thoroughly menacing presence throughout the game.
I was SO impressed by the original trailer that, having now completed the game, I can safely say that the game definitely delivers on what the trailer promised. It has proper scares, with a fantastic and unique retro sci-fi aesthetic. Nicely done. I don't regret my purchase at all. And if that's enough for you too, then fantastic. I hope you have fun with it, just like I did.
However...
The Bad
The gameplay is not what you think it is, nor is the story, and neither of these aspects were made clear in the original or subsequent trailers.
The game embraces the fact that your character is a software engineer, so the gameplay is basically just a lot of puzzles, mostly finding four-digit access codes, and with absolutely no combat. Then there is the story, which is very arthouse, but more on that later.
Gameplay-wise, the game mechanics of ROUTINE are a bit of a mess. For example, you get a flashlight that comes with an upgrade to your multi-tool, but the flashlight is secondary to the screen on your multi-tool. This means that, when you use it, the tiny screen on your multi-tool is in focus, but the area that you're trying to see with your flashlight is out of focus. This is incredibly impractical. If you were a real engineer you would simply tape a flashlight to your helmet. Job done. (At no point during the game do you ever get a regular flashlight).
The battery mechanic is also daft. A battery has only three charges, which is absurd, but what's more absurd is that you don't have any pockets to put extra batteries in. (If only I was an engineer that could find a practical solution to this).
There are other game mechanics that allow the character to stretch high up on your tippy-toes, or crouch very low to the ground, and these actions are both incredibly under-utilised to such a degree that they are almost pointless, and I'm not sure why they're even included.
Lastly, for a software engineer, you don't do anything that might have been what a software engineer would actually do. For a start, you never give yourself admin rights, or bypass any security. You don't even bring up a schematic of the base to act as a map, let alone do anything remotely. By that I mean, it would have been nice to remotely close a door behind an enemy once it's been lured into a room, but everything the character does is all physical and requires direct input.
The story is also not what you think it is, and it's not much of a spoiler to say that it is essentially a descent into madness.
Because the story takes this direction it allows the writers a lot more creative license to do what they want, and boy, they do. As a result, if ROUTINE were a movie it would come across as an indie arthouse film more so than a straight-forward thriller/horror with a traditional 3-act structure. Think more like Naked Lunch or Save The Green Planet rather than Moon or Apollo 13. (I would have loved the game to have been more like Moon, but The Alters have already claimed that territory).
A more arthouse story means the story is very conceptual, and "interpretive", but to me that just means that it leaves a lot of loose ends, and while that's arty, I guess, it's unsatisfying, for sure. Judging by other reviews I've read, this story direction seems to have been a rather unpopular decision. That's a shame because with a little extra work it could have been fantastic.
What we're left with however are lots of things that aren't explained. (More on this in the spoiler section).
If you want an arthouse horror experience with a brilliant retro-lunar aesthetic then ROUTINE is your jam, and I'm very happy for you. Expect it to be 15-20 hrs in total, but it's a one-off experience. Once it's complete there's no incentive to replay it. Again, it's worth the price just for the aesthetic, which is why I bought it. The scares are just a fun bonus. And I'll repeat, I very almost recommended this game, and I genuinely hope it does well.
Below is a deep-dive into the story for people who have completed it, so be warned, it's full of spoilers:
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On the face of it we have the bare bones of a story, but because of the way it's told - as a descent into madness - we get very little payoff to any of the elements within it. I.e. Nothing is really explained fully. And it's not because we go mad before we figure out what's actually happened. We don't work out any of the answers because they're just not there!
For example, I wanted to know how the robots could have been affected by the creature. What was the real reason why they turned? Did a staff member go mad and purposely turn them on the humans? (And why, as a Software Engineer, could I not reset them?) What was the bacteria? What was the flower? What happened to the people who went into the Canal? Seriously, what happened to them?! This was a huge part of the story. I also wanted to know more about how the creature came to be, and why it looked like a mutated human? (I found it a little on the nose that the female creature died from choking on an apple as a way to clumsily re-tell the Adam & Eve story, but I digress). There were so many questions left unanswered, but at the centre of this was the creature itself. While it told an alien-version of boy meets girl, boy loses girl by choking on an off-world apple, it was all a little uninspiring.
Personally, I would have preferred the creature to be a more realistic rendition of what a lunar creature might actually be like, instead of the rather generic horror creature that we got. For instance, how about a subterranean hivemind bacteria that could change its form, and sometimes mimic our form, but is also psychic? This would explain why it's a hivemind, and how it has been defending itself against the humans after its underground lunar environment was disturbed. Not only would this have made more sense as to what has happened, allowed the story to go in more directions, and be more fun to discover the creature's origins, but it would have been FAR scarier just because it's more believable. Instead, the creature we ended up with was good for jump scares, but it was also a bit silly-looking. Goofy, even.
Getting more satisfying answers was essential for the player, especially since that was the sole purpose of us being there. It was literally our character's job to find out. This is why I think ROUTINE missed many opportunities to do some truly amazing things. By making more courageous decisions with what it did with its story, and how they told it, Lunar Software could have set things up where you were a detective, but also an unreliable narrator. Think: Shutter Island. Not knowing what to trust, but using your technical skills to work out what was actually true.
However, for a story that is essentially a descent into madness, it only did the bare minimum to convince us we were going mad. While there were plenty of abstract liminal spaces to creep us out with, this does not make a satisfying or convincing unravelling of the mind. There were no rug-pulls, no twists, no questioning of my own reality. Nothing! (With the single exception of a Yes / Yes option on a terminal).
For instance, I wanted to have elements of the game that I previously came to rely on suddenly and completely collapse on me. Imagine this: The creature is behind me, chasing me, and I run to a terminal that is in a safe area. I arrive, out of arm's reach from the creature. Safe, but shaken. I turn to the terminal and when I lift up my multi-tool I'm holding a skull. It's a human skull! My head screams and I black out. I wake up in a small empty room. In front of me is a locked door - Security Level: Death. What does that mean? I use my multi-tool. It matches! The door explodes outward! The sudden vacuum yanks me and the door into the cold emptiness of space. I float aimlessly, breathing fast, until I come to with a gasp, in front of the terminal I was originally trying to operate, but now my multi-tool is in my hand. (No skull this time) The creature is no longer right behind me. Silence. What just happened? Was the creature behind me at all when I originally ran here, or was I just hallucinating it? Is there a creature at all, or am I just going mad? How can I get proof I saw what I saw? Is there video footage, and if so, what will it show me? If there is a creature, did I just suffer a psychic attack from it? THAT'S the stuff I'm talking about.
I wanted my mind to be rough-housed like this. If I'm going to go insane I want to go proper kookoo for cocoa puffs insane.
(In my version, you eventually discover a small empty room with a skull in the corner of it. No body, just the skull. The body is found later, but on the other side of the map).
Imagine the game purposefully trying to confuse you: Go down a corridor only to have the corridor lead to a different room than it did before. Doors move from where I thought they were originally. I'm unsuspectingly locked in a repeating sequence where I keep walking down the same corridor like the game/demo PT. Not forever, of course, but a few times, and then have it inexplicably return to normal. I wanted to have miscellaneous objects shift places or disappear entirely when I look back at them, and then have them reappear when I look back a third time (like The Stanley Parable). Twist my reality.
One more: I'm tripping out while the creature is psychically attacking me, but when I zap the creature with my multi-tool, suddenly I can see things as they really are. The same happens when I take a photo with my multi-tool. I get a literal snapshot of reality to help me work out what's real, similar to the flashlight in Fard.
Perhaps we work out that the creature is averse to high levels of electromagnetism, which explains why some areas of the base are safe, like around the terminals. And the areas of the base that shift around on us the most (because we're being psychically attacked) means the closer we are to finding the creature's central nervous system. It's only once we've worked out ways to prove something is real or not is when we can confront the creature, and... Move it to a new location? Kill it? Communicate with it? That would be up to the player.
After I wrote out a bunch of these ideas I then had to reflect on what ROUTINE's story actually was, instead of what I would have wanted it to be, and that's why I changed my mind about my recommendation.
The changes/suggestions I've outlined might add up to nothing more than a mod, or perhaps a semi-substantial update, or DLC. I.e. It's perfectly do-able. None of the above ideas would change the overall structure of ROUTINE, but it would make the overall experience more satisfying as a whole. For whatever reason, Lunar Software decided to take things in a direction that I believe lacked the depth I was hoping for, and made decisions about its lore that could have been easily improved. When I see a game that is technically outstanding, but doesn't reach its creative potential for nothing more than the decisions it's made with its story, I can't help but feel, "If only...".
What is a Conscientious Landlord?
If you:
- Paid off your mortgage/s
- Have 2 or less properties in total
- Rent your premises at rates that were normal 15 years ago or more.
Then you are a Conscientious Landlord.
Use #ConcientiousLandlord in your searches to find a new home.
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Young people have been priced out of owning their own home, forever. As a society, it's disgraceful that we've let things get this bad, and none of our leaders have the courage to make the radical changes needed to reverse the situation. What's worse is that those who are already wealthy are scooping up the remaining properties which then drives up the cost of houses, which also inflates the cost of rent, groceries, and the cost of living in general. Couples are deciding not to have children because life itself has become too expensive. This is madness.
Defenders of the system would call this Unregulated Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, or Corporate Capitalism and say that this doesn't reflect the true nature of capitalism itself, but they're wrong.
Capitalism is dynamic, and will evolve over time with a clear and predictable outcome: Wealth will concentrate to such an intensity that it will threaten the structure of the system itself. This is also described as capitalism eating itself, or Late-Stage Capitalism. This is what we're seeing play out around the world right now.
Once you can see that what motivates the evolution of capitalism IS the concentration of wealth you will understand that every type of capitalism is simply an expression of capitalism morphing from one shape to another as wealth steadily concentrates, and that it is all the same system slowly shifting to an end point.
The phrase, "Give ten people 10c each and eventually one person will have a dollar and the rest will have nothing", describes this phenomenon, and while the phrase itself may seem hyperbolic, divide the world into tenths, measuring the wealth from the highest to lowest of these percentiles, and you will see that it is, in fact, startlingly accurate.
We are born into this unjust system, and any alternative expression of it, like socialism, is subject to sabotage, propaganda or military intervention. Moreover, any attempt to rewrite the rules by introducing a wealth limit of 1 billion dollars, or a poverty limit like a Universal Basic Income, are squashed.
WIP:
Red/Blue politicians will argue about how to adjust the dials of an economy, taking turns
The prices of rent and houses are high because rich own multiple properties. This now includes corporations that are buying up residential properties as part of their portfolios. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to buy residential properties. The government should cap individuals owning more than 3 houses. People should be citizens of the country they buy their houses in. Zero overseas ownership.
This is due to the greed of the rich, which includes the concept of Usury, explained below.
Usury is banned in most religions.
Landlords and corporations that buy multiple investment properties have created a housing crisis which have driven up property prices, which has also contributed to .
No one in power has the courage to cap the number of investment properties a person can own. A person in New Zealand has over 500 investment properties.
If you go against the greedy grain and
Anyone who own
A fictional short story set in a post-utopian society
Insulin is a miracle drug.
It's also horrendously overpriced.
That's because Big Pharma own the patents on it, and they're not shy about exploiting that fact. The patents Big Pharma own are for today's more advanced forms of insulin, however the earliest version of the drug was patented by its discoverers in 1923, who then sold it to a public research university for $1 as a statement of goodwill. One of insulin's inventors, Dr Frederick Banting, said, "Insulin doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the world".
But that was then.
Today, four big pharmaceutical companies (Eli Lilly, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and Pfizer) own patents on insulin formulas that are much more effective, however their plan isn't to give it to the world. Instead, it is to make maximum profit quite literally at the expense of human suffering.
These companies are within their legal right to do this, by the way, and that is true in all the different forms capitalism can take, so the cost of the miracle drug, insulin, can rise 600% over 20 years without any legal consequence.
However, in the self-declared Free Republic of United Helpers, everything is free, including insulin. In this large, but isolated community of less than 30,000 people, the inhabitants don't use money as a medium of exchange, like the rest of the world. Their economy is “help-based”. Products are only produced because of voluntary cooperation, and the decision to make a product is determined by the need for that product, as well as if the resources are available.
As it stands, even advanced forms of insulin can be created with only a moderate level of technology and resources, so when the United Helpers were able to manufacture insulin for their own people, Big Pharma moved to stop this.
What ensued was a battle between the people of a help-based free economy and the pharmaceutical companies of a money-based “real” economy.At first Big Pharma attacked the problem from the angle of patent infringement, sending the United Helpers a cease and desist notice. Problem solved, they thought. However the insulin patent owned by Big Pharma, including the entire legal framework it exists within, is not recognised in the Free Republic of United Helpers.
There are no patents in the region because there is no need for patents when everything is free, therefore the concept of patent law is also unnecessary. To a Helper, if you can build it, then that's all that matters. After careful consideration, the Council of Helpers correctly dismissed the cease and desist notice as inapplicable.
Since the United Helpers don’t use money, then money-based rules, rewards and punishments cannot apply.
In their return letter the Helpers stressed the point that their society is organised under a completely different system than the one the accusations of criminality are being levelled from. In a Helpers’ society, under their system and their rules, no criminal act is being committed.
Big Pharma then attempted to sue the Free Republic of United Helpers for damages, but using their own form of currency: Help.
The lawyers brought forward a case demanding compensation to an equivalent sum of money that Big Pharma claimed was owed to them in lost revenue. Total damages: $1.4 Billion dollars. If the economy was “help-based” then what United Helpers owed Big Pharma needed to be $1.4 Billion dollars worth of free labour - their interpretation of help - based on average wages. A successful outcome would either pose enough of a threat to stop the Helpers making the insulin or, at the very least, disrupt and possibly collapse the system United Helpers had created. A breakdown of their society would re-install capitalism to the region where Big Pharma’s patents could be enforced again. Either outcome was acceptable.
The problem, however, was that the United Helpers operated on a form of conditional volunteerism. The condition being that Helpers would only help other Helpers. If you weren't willing to help other Helpers then Helpers had no obligation to help you. It was a simple rule that acted as the central unifying idea for their entire community, but since none of Big Pharma's board members were willing to become Helpers themselves in order to qualify for receiving help in return, it made this particular legal approach rather pointless.
At this stage the corporate board members of these giant corporations were privately experiencing great forms of anguish and for good reason. They had to live with the cruel knowledge that their prized cash cow, insulin, was being created and distributed, for free, without any return to the legitimate owners of the patent, them. It was nothing short of maddening, and this prompted Big Pharma to adopt a far more desperate and underhanded approach: The use of propaganda as a weapon.
Hidden from public view, Big Pharma crafted an attack campaign against the United Helpers that was based around a clever lie, designed to shift public opinion about their community, and hopefully ruin them in the process. Not their bank accounts, because they had none, but their reputation as an alternative way of life.
After all, how dare they think they can find a loop hole in the established order of things by creating an entirely new system? It simply wouldn’t stand, and so this purposefully engineered deception would soon prove to be both believable and effective because it would confirm the common person's darkest suspicions about what the United Helpers might actually be: A cult.
A secretive group of individuals, hiding behind a wholesome façade, in order to disguise their nefarious intentions.
While that could accurately describe the Big Pharma board members themselves, it would serve as an excellent foundation for the propaganda the board would slowly construct about United Helpers, even though it sat directly opposite from the truth.
The attacks began with paid news reports. Rumours surrounding strange disappearances of young women.
Interviews with distraught parents. “We felt our daughter slipping away from us the more she became lost in that horrible cult”. Stories that hinged on vague accusations and slippery details, but always plausible enough to start a narrative of suspicion and mistrust. Then came the allegations of illicit drug-use mixed with bizarre rituals to distance the Helpers as being “the other”. Different. Apart. And on and on it went.
The same key words purposefully inserted into every printed article and news segment that began a drumbeat of repetition, and with it a momentum of fear in the average person's heart.
As the ”Helpers are a cult“ narrative gained traction, it also created a vacuum for contrarian news reports about the United Helpers in general. Any kind of information which could reveal a darker side to the United Helpers became instantly popular, and the most popular of these stories was the Douglas Mitchell interview.
Douglas was rumoured to be a disgruntled Helper living in the Free Republic of United Helpers. Disillusioned by the system he was now a part of, he didn't mind going on record to tell the unvarnished truth about what’s really been going on.
To the editors of the corporate news outlets, this was gold.
It turned out Douglas Mitchell was previously an accountant in his old life back in Missouri, and he was against everything that these Helpers stood for. He didn't enjoy the average Helper's world view, didn't like their demeanour, their earnestness, nothing. Douglas had kept his mouth shut for the last 18 months he had been living here, but when he was given the opportunity to speak to the press about how things actually operated, he went for it.
“We’re recording", informed the camera man.
Douglas sat in his dilapidated unit, bathed in an aura of bright light coming from the stage lamp the camera crew had brought with them. Douglas nodded to the camera man and, prompted by his interviewer, began describing the entire system these Helpers had created as being an unmitigated mess.
"It's like I've chosen to live in a third-world country. If only you people knew the luxuries you have at home. What you take for granted, on a daily basis, it’s... you just don’t realise. Being here is a hard life. It's tough. You've got to do a lot yourself, and you've got people always checking in on you, like a prison, but where all the inmates are looking after each other, without guards. It's weird... It's a weird and horrible place and I would urge anyone who is thinking about coming here to take a closer look because it's not the utopian dream you think it is.”
The interviewer asked, “If it’s so bad, then why do you stay?”
Douglas let out an exasperated sigh, like telling this next bit was a chore for him. "Because back in Missouri I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and I had lost my job as an accountant of a big firm, so that meant I didn't have Health Insurance anymore. I had no job so I couldn't afford the $500 a month that insulin costs. I was facing homelessness as a diabetic. It was either come here or die.”
"And that's the reason you became a Helper?”
“Yes. Insulin is free here".
And that was it. Right there. That was the moment when Big Pharma's propaganda suddenly and spectacularly backfired.
"Oh...", replied the reporter, trailing off. Having what he’d later come to understand as an epiphany. ”Yes, of course".
Douglas continued, ”The [beep]ing [beep]ers at Big Pharma can't stop us from making our own insulin, even if they own the patents. Patents are a money thing and we don’t use money, so we don’t need patents. [Beep], we don’t even need permission. We just make it! And because we’re free to live like that, free to make these things for free, like the insulin I need, it means, well… it just means that, uh…”, his previous intensity began to crack with real emotion, “...coming here has literally saved my life”.
The interview went on, but the damage was done. The public reacted to the news story with a renewed sense of curiosity about the Free Republic of United Helpers. Not to confirm their darkest suspicions anymore, like they were quietly being manoeuvred to do, but instead to find out if this place is somewhere they could pin their hopes onto.
Is it really a place where the act of “helping others” is the currency between people? A place where the rules of money no longer matter? What's it like to live there? People now wanted to know because, like the reporter interviewing Douglas Mitchell, they too had an epiphany.
An epiphany is very different from a discovery though. Whereas a discovery is the moment when you find something that was previously hidden, or obscured, an epiphany is recognising something that was always right there in front of you.
In this case, it was an idea.
This short story was written by Mat Brady and inspired by a YouTube video by Russell Brand: https://youtu.be/kk7d5JocgvY
and further inspired by the Open Insulin Foundation: openinsulin.org
Thanks also to the Facebook group, Moneyless Society, where it was first published.
