In the production of the Season 7 Episode 8 of South Park, "South Park is Gay!", creators Matt and Trey brainstormed the ending for hours, before coming up with a completely goofy out-of-the-blue third act that barely tied into the entertaining initial premise and have since referred to the episode as "one of their worst" due to this random reveal dragging down the entire setup; yet despite that, fans at large seem to have found the ending hilarious and have professed great enjoyment of Crab People.

The last two seconds of Iron Lung are the horror equivalent of Crab People.

God damn it. One of the worst experiences to have with a video game is gradually feeling the opposite of it "clicking together". The first few hours of this are downright enchanting, the elaborate prose gets you sucked so easily into the world of this rundown space colony and you get the genuine impression that your build and choices matter in the long run. You're managing the limited time you have the best you can, juggling between progressing quests and keeping yourself alive, start thinking about future runs even before finishing your first one and all of it is a great time.

That is until about halfway through, when the smoke-and-mirrors falls apart and it becomes evident that the questlines never intersect in any meaningful manner, none of your choices matter save for binary selections for the endings, and the tension built up by an in-game death timer actually means fuck all. Which is a damn shame because there's some really nice writing and worldbuilding here - save for the occasional script clunkiness due to it being a small production, the storylines are consistently engaging, character motivations are layered and they do a really good job of conveying how much of a shithole the Eye is. And for a while, the gameplay systems were pulling their weight here too, making you feel like just another cog in the machine; until you hit the point in your playthrough when you're a jack of all trades with an entire savings account at your disposal, and all of the world interaction slowly turns to tedium due to the ultimately meaningless timegate system. I understand the intention was to give the player some room to work on different quests simultaneously as they wait for their primary one to open up, but the closer you get to endgame, the less content there is to warrant these kinds of restrictions.

Regardless of the meandering gameloop and the incredibly annoying illusion of choice, this was honestly still a good way to spend some 10-ish hours. The writing really brings the setting to life and it was fun seeing these characters evolve and fulfill their goals in a cruel world that doesn't welcome them. I just wish it wasn't constantly being betrayed by the gameplay.