Iron Lung

Iron Lung is a horror adventure game with sim elements. It was developed by David Szymanski - an independent developer whose portfolio includes DUSK; he also helped create Gloomwood.

Plot

Iron Lung takes us on a journey to a world where decades earlier all the stars disappeared in mysterious circumstances, and with them - the habitable planets. In a universe full of asteroids and moons, only those on stations and spaceships survived. When their supplies began to shrink, they looked for a chance to replenish them in mysterious anomalies known as Oceans of Blood, which appeared on the barren moons. We take on the role of a daredevil who is locked aboard a hastily assembled submarine (the Iron Lung) and sent on a mission to explore one of these oceans.

Game mechanics

In Iron Lung we observe the action from a first person perspective (FPP). The game takes place entirely on the claustrophobic deck of our submarine. Having a map at our disposal, where places requiring exploration are marked, we steer the ship ourselves, manually entering the coordinates of the locations we want to go to. As we progress, our feeling of danger, caused by mysterious, terrifying sounds coming from the depths, constantly grows. This is further enhanced by the fact that we can't really see what's happening in the ocean, and the only way to see the underwater world is through pixelated, black and white photos taken with a primitive camera. The game was designed to be completed within an hour.

Technical aspects

Graphics in Iron Lung is in retro style, taken from the games of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The audio layer of the game presents a high level, and it consists mainly of sounds made by our boat and its equipment, as well as sounds that occasionally come from the depths.