Just to be clear, this isn't really a review. It's more like an explanation of why I can't get into the game. I wanted to enjoy it, but the gameplay is actively keeping me from getting sucked into the atmosphere and the music. I'm sorry, but I'd rather watch somebody else play it. Is it bad that this makes me even more excited for the movie?

I played Iron Lung for about thirty minutes and lost all of my progress cause the automatic save kicked in before I got any objectives. That combined with the controls and the unhelpful map discouraged me from continuing the game.

It's cool that a game so short has automatic saves and loading, but if you're gonna go that far then you might as well go all the way and give the player the option to save/load anytime they want. Maybe I've been spoiled by the Ace Attorney Trilogy, but I wouldn't feel as frustrated if I had my own safety checkpoint.

Don't know if this just cause I played the Switch port, but the controls feel slippery. I think I saw an option in the main menu that fixes that, though I left the settings as the default cause I wasn't sure if I would need the settings changed. I only realized the issue after I started the game and I couldn't change the settings without exiting to the main menu. I guess that was my fault for not changing the settings right away, but can you really blame me for not expecting the default movement/camera speed to be a little too quick in a game all about meticulously planning your route and carefully avoiding obstacles?

I'm unsure how I feel about the map. I get that it's deliberately vague, it's just that my issue with the map feels unintentional. Any objectives on the map that aren't highlighted by the cursor have this dark color to them that blends in with the map. This issue ended up in me completely missing one of the objectives and having to backtrack after getting a different objective. Kinda frustrating ngl.

TLDR: Iron lung is cool, but a lot more fun to watch than play. Its more of a novelty than an actual fully formed video game.

The guy a few reviews below me said: "Games do not have to be fun to be good." And while I ALMOST agree, I think that its an overgeneralization to a lot of horror in media. I think that video games do have to be fun in some way, or at least provide some novel player interaction within the medium.
I can understand the sentiment that good media is not always enjoyable, and enjoyable media is not always good; but if the actual gameplay doesn't enhance the experience of playing the game, then why is it a game in the first place?

As neat of a concept this game was, I ended up feeling very underwhelmed. The lore takes a grand total of 10 minutes to fully understand, and the gameplay consists of purely pushing buttons on a console. Those who have completed the game might agree that the payoff you get after completing your objective is fairly underwhelming.

I am not alone in this empty blood ocean

Horror has been a beloved genre for millions of people for a century now and that can also be said with video games. A great horror game will make you think about it for a couple hours after you finish it, it will send you into a depressing vegetative state and i can't think of anything that has done something like that in recent time other than Iron Lung. You see, for years i have played so many horror games from many different titles and what i can learn from those experiences is that horror can really expose the fear that every person have. Fear of dark, fear of enclosed space, fear of deep sea, fear of loud noises, fear of blood, these are just an example that horror genre used often for so long. But there is one fear that i think most people couldn't stand or dealt with and that is the fear of the unknown.

Short but powerful, that is a sentence that i can describe Iron Lung. It set in an ocean of blood on an alien moon in the wake of the “Quiet Rapture," which is one of the scariest description for an apocalypse i've ever seen, an event which saw the disappearance of every lifeform in the universe with the exception of people living on autonomous space stations. After every known star and planet in the universe disappears, the last remnants of humanity send a prisoner, namely you as the player to the depth of this strange moon covered in a sea of ​​blood to explore what secrets may lie beneath its surface in a submarine. And you never know what is inside of the moon. The only thing you see is the inside of the small submarine you have welded together, and the low resolution images you can take of the inside.

The gameplay might be simple but it is what makes the game more intense and scarier which makes me more appreciate it. You navigate the ocean by adjusting your bearing, and forward velocity via a simple interface. You press the right button on your console to turn right, and the left button to turn left. You press the forward button to go forward, and the backward facing button to go backwards. It is simple, and slow. Your camera is controlled by a button at the back of your ship. To see where you are going you have to turn around and walk away from your controls. This means that, when you hear a thud outside your ship, there is a significant delay between the sound and your ability to take a photo of what made that noise. The photographs take a moment to develop and the delay makes me crazy, sick, feelings that i have not feel before with horror games because you are not alone in the craters of this impossibly alive, alien moon.

That aspect of Iron Lung is what keeps me still thinking and put me in state that i have never experience before in my life. A simple tension that comes from blindly navigating your sub, constantly looking at the map to try to figure out what you are to make sure you don’t crash your sub. It’s a finicky process, but focusing on the little things does a great job of lulling you into a rhythm and keeping you from bracing yourself for surprises. It keeps you busy with all the numbers and navigation controls that sometimes can messes you up. There are moments where you’re looking at the map and you feel like you shouldn’t be close to a wall, but for some reason, your motion sensor starts beeping at you. Do you have your calculations wrong, or could it be something else?

Even more so than most horror games, Iron Lung builds tension through exceptional sound design. Your ship is thick with the noise of the ocean, the thud of cave walls and the sound of blood (thick) moving around your ship. The sounds of the ocean around you range from mundane to worrying as you begin to suspect there are creatures out there that you have no way of seeing.

After i read the intro text states that there’s no time to train the prisoner on the operation of the sub before launch, i was certain that I was going to die. Whether it be from a lack of oxygen, or the crushing pressure, or some impossible thing in the blood water, didn’t actually matter. I knew I would die. Which meant the assumption of death, and horror, lurks around every corner. Every thud against the ship’s hull became colored by death. Every ruptured pneumatic pipe, a signal that my time was up. And of course the screen that showed you everything that you don't want to know about the moon.

Iron Lung is a game that evokes the end of a broken world, one defined by cruel systems which we built foolishly. Your investigation, and your focus, are cruel pantomimes of an attempt at a better future. It is an inevitable failure, and an execution. In most horror games, there's at least a hope that'll make it out alive and return to normalcy, but in Iron Lung there is no normalcy to return to.

Dear David Szymanski, I really didnt appreciate that jumpscare, I almost shat myself.

Despite almost giving me a heart attack, the game is an incredible and horrific experience. The atmosphere and mood of the game absorb you, and even with its very simple and limited gameplay, it manages to use those limitations to its advantage. It makes you feel tiny and powerless in front of the ocean where your submarine lies, completely trapping you in the mysterious, isolated, and terrifying ‘ocean of blood’ in which the game takes place.

Iron Lung gives you just enough information to allow your imagination to run wild inside your claustrophobic little sub, resulting in a clever little minimalist horror game.

The premise is also very metal in a way that I enjoyed a lot - a convict pressed into a suicide mission in a rusty little can at the bottom of an ocean of blood? That's good stuff.

However, as short as the game is, I don't think the somewhat tedious (intentionally so, to be fair) gameplay was enough to sustain the hour or hour and a half of playtime in this game, leading me to believe it would have been stronger as an even shorter microgame.

So, points for originality and atmosphere, but it overstays its welcome a little too much to be truly great.

Such a short microgame that I can't justify something higher than 3 stars. Extremely basic, controls are just adjusting angle and coordinates and then taking the occasional picture.

The lore is what made this game so popular, that and the fact that the biggest youtuber ever fell in love with the game and decided, "Hey, you could make a movie out of this..."

I love Dave Syzmanski's games and this fits his niche of just short form horror games that would be fun at a Halloween Party