Life, it’s all about routines, as illustrated perfectly by the phrase: eat, work, sleep, repeat.

And games have their fair share of routines: kill baddies, solve a puzzle, plant a tree, move on etc.

Taking the notion of routine to a scary degree is this game based on the popular Japanese anime Spy x Family.

You play as Anya, whose parents just so happen to be spies. Although she’s still at school, she desperately wants to join the family vocation of spying, so does as much as she can, around her school work of course, to prepare her for a life of undercover work.

It is a game of routines like no other. It’s difficult not to think of it as game version of Groundhog Day, with you having to go through a truly dull daily routine. Anya gets up, goes to school, returns from school, speaks to her family, eats her dinner, goes to bed, and repeat. For the entire game. This sees you quickly pressing a button to skip scene after scene, to the point you may soon find your thumb going numb.

In between all these standard scenes are moments of play. The most regular is having Anya take photos of her day. This is where you have to try and take the perfect picture, by having it in focus, at the right angle, capturing the perfect moment. It takes only seconds, but there’s a calming effect to the process, with the drive to fill your scrapbook with perfect shots.

Thankfully, it isn’t just school and home where she takes these pictures, as the family go on various trips, to places such as the park, the aquarium and the beach. Unfortunately you can only take a couple of pictures per visit, which forces you to go back.

The only thing there is to break the monotony of the day are a number of mini-games that you unlock along the way. These involve a number of scenes from the show itself, such as when the family went bowling, just to tie it to the theme of the game. There is also a rhythm game, a cooking game etc. These are mostly fun, with enough variety to entertain over around fifteen games to play.

And that is it.

Essentially then, this game compromises of a number of mini-games that are padded with far too many repetitive cut scenes, that if you were to watch every one, would surely burn onto your retinas permanently.

If you are a die-hard fan of the show, then there would possibly be some merit to own this game, but otherwise, with its rigid formula that is routine personified, there’s no real reason to put yourself through it. After all, life is short.