"Beginning your descent. Cruising depth in approximately forty seconds, standby. I'm seeing some voltage irregularities in the instruments, so keep an eye out for sparks or flames, or anything like that. Approaching maximum depth. The hull is feeling it but it's still holding strong. Closing port hole shielding. We're starting to lose rad- ...o signal. You'll be at cruise depth soon, so re- *Static* ...thing, be careful. You're on yo- ...r own. Goo—"
— Radio
Iron Lung is a science fiction indie horror game. It was created by David Szymanski (also known for DUSK, The Pony Factory and Squirrel Stapler) with the Unity engine and released on March 10th, 2022.
The game is set in a world where every star and habitable planet in the universe inexplicably vanished, taking the inhabitants with them in an event known as the "Quiet Rapture." Decades later, the survivors struggle to survive and maintain society on space stations and barren moons. Some of these sparsely explored moons have strange phenomena, with one moon in particular being home to a mysterious ocean of blood.
The player controls a convict who is tasked with taking a ramshackle submarine to the bottom of this blood ocean to explore and photograph points of interest for researchers, in the hopes of finding useful resources. If the player completes their mission and returns with the photographs, they will be granted their freedom. But with the submarine rapidly falling apart, rudimentary navigation technology and ever-decreasing oxygen levels, survival itself is a challenge. To say nothing of what may be lurking in the bloody depths...
On April 21st, 2023, a film adaptation of the game was announced
, to be written and directed by Markiplier. It has also had two fan-made adaptations.
Tropes found in Iron Lung include:
- 13 Is Unlucky: The moniker "Iron Lung" is, in fact, just a nickname for the submarine used in the game. The mission briefing provided to you refers to it as the SM-13.
- After the End: Although the universe has vanished, leaving the last humans struggling to survive, tensions have erupted between Coaliton of Iron and Eden Station, resulting in a conflict on one of the last and largest remaining space stations, Filament Station. The battle led to its destruction.
- Alien Sea: The game is set under an ocean of blood on a moon far from Earth.
- The Alleged Car: Or more specifically, the alleged submarine. The Iron Lung is a tiny, rust bucket of a submarine that really isn't suited to exploring bodies of water at the depth required. It has been cobbled together from space station parts left over by the quiet rapture, but is currently the best the researchers have to work with. Because the sub can't really handle the pressure, the player is welded in and the only window is sealed over, forcing them to rely on coordinates, sonar and a cruddy camera to navigate. Even then, the damn thing starts getting leaks late in the game. Oh, and that fire extinguisher is on the wall for a good reason too.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: As the game progresses, an "oxygen" reading inside the submarine will gradually tick down. By the time the expedition reaches its climax, you'll find yourself on your last reserves of breathable air. Rather than being Oxygen Meter in gameplay terms, the level depletes with story progression instead of it being real-time — gameplay-wise your oxygen is infinite. You could just idle at the start of the game for 3-4 hours and your oxygen would still be near-full.
- Alternative Calendar:
- Instead of AD or CE, humanity now uses EIC (Epoch of Interplanetary Colonization), which is based on Earth's rotation. 0 EIC corresponds with 1992 AD. The Quiet Rapture happened 357 EIC, and the game itself is set 378 EIC, putting the game's events in 2370 AD.
- Eden also uses the IMC (Interstellar Martian Calendar), which is based on Mars' rotation.
- Alternate History: In version 2 of the game, entering "Mars" in the C.O.I. Information Terminal at the back of the sub reveals that the first colonies on Mars were established in 1992.
- Ambiguous Criminal History: What crime the player character was convicted for is never stated. The Lore Update subtly implies they may have been taken prisoner by the Coalition of Iron during the battle against Eden Station.
- Animalistic Abomination: The huge aquatic beast from the ending.
- Anti-Frustration Features: When you go into small alcoves that require near-perfect maneuvering to reach and take several minutes, after you've taken the relevant picture, something will bump you and throw you back to an open area in a second. In addition to removing the boring return journey, the bump and sudden relocation will scare the pants off of you the first time it happens.
- Apocalyptic Log: An unconventional example. In version 2 of the game, going to a secret point of interest near the normal final one will allow you to find the wreckage of a previous submarine with the label SM-8. Typing this into the C.O.I. Informational Terminal will unlock a secret log from some insider telling you about the SM-8 was a sub that was actually designed to search the blood oceans, but ended up destroyed by something down here. The reason you've been sent is to try and find more info that might be useful.
- Apocalypse How: Type Universal, the severity level hovering somewhere between Societal Disruption and Societal Collapse, with possible extinctions and physical destruction in some areas. In the backstory, a mysterious event known as "the Quiet Rapture" saw every habitable planet in the known universe vanish along with the people (and plants and animals) on them, never to be seen again. The stars all disappeared too. All of this is bad news for the survivors, given the loss of both many resources and the conditions to create new resources.
- Artistic License – Biology: An ocean of blood would be too thick for traditional photography to work under. The only way the convict could take any pictures showing points of interest, is via sonar imagery.
- Artistic License – Physics: As you progress through the game, the sub will eventually leak and gradually flood with ocean blood, and you'll get a good enough glimpse of the sea monster bursting through sub before it eats you. But if the sub is so far down that radio communication is gone and the porthole has to be sealed shut to survive the immense pressure at the bottom of the sea, then any leak would have caused the sub to instantly implode in a few milliseconds before you could even realize what happened.note But that wouldn't be near as horrifying as realizing you're about to die and there's nothing you can do about it.
- Athens and Sparta: The COI is humanity's last known progressive, scientific society while Eden is humanity's last known nationalist, warlike society.
- Black Screen of Death: Shown right after the player dies through any means. Also accompanied with a Title Drop when the Iron Lung is destroyed by the monster.
- Blind Driving: Because the depths the Iron Lung must explore are well beyond what the submersible is rated for, the entire thing is welded shut and all the portholes are sealed. You must use a proximity sensor, coordinate reader and map, and camera to determine where you are and what's going on around you.
- Boxed Crook: The player character is told that if they complete the research mission on the blood moon, they will be released from prison. It isn't made clear what exactly they did to get put in prison in the first place. Of course, the line about "release" is a lie; the top brass fully expect you to die down there, whether by crashing the sub or being killed by whatever destroyed the last sub. Best-case scenario, you'll be allowed to suffocate in peace after bringing the pictures back. This is system is a wide-spread institution in the COI known as "conviction realization", which is seen as community service.
- But What About the Astronauts?: The game's setting is based off of this trope, with the only thing remaining of humanity being the astronauts on colonies and on space stations due to the "Quiet Rapture" causing every habitable planet, every life form — humans included— and the stars to vanish.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Humanity has mostly inexplicably disappeared along with most celestial bodies, leaving few survivors in barren and small space stations. They send you in a small cramped submarine into the bottom of an unexplained and unexplored ocean of blood tasked with taking pictures that you can barely explain.
- Crapsack World: The game's setting is established as bleak and spooky right off the bat: decades ago all the habitable planets and stars mysteriously disappeared, along with all the people on said planets. The only survivors were people on moons and space stations. Resources are running out and infrastructure is starting to crumble. Whoever's in charge also have no problem sending the player to the bottom of the ocean in a sub-par submarine to carry out a dangerous mission, as they're seen as more "disposable" than actual researchers because they're a convicted criminal.
- Critical Existence Failure: Making contact with any walls or obstacles, even gently, leads to the submarine's hull rupturing and an immediate game over. This is possibly justified however, as the Iron Lung isn't designed for the depths the game takes place at, and seems to be barely holding it together.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The player character either gets Eaten Alive by a giant fish creature or drowns in an ocean of blood (it's possible they're so far down that the pressure alone would've killed them too).
- Developer's Foresight: Starting a new game and travelling straight to the final point of interest, (which you should be unable to photograph as you are attacked by a sea creature) nets you a secret achievement for your curiosity; it's specifically titled "You've Played This Before."
- Doomed Protagonist: A note left by a former pilot of the submarine warns you that the researchers who condemned you to this punishment don't expect you to come back alive. Further notes, in particular a secret one in the terminal from typing in "SM-8," state that even if you do make it back, best-case scenario is they'll just let you suffocate in peace.
- Downer Ending: Once the convict encounters the sea monster when close to their final objective, there's no escape from their submarine being torn apart and them being eaten. It's then revealed that the researchers weren't able to get much information from the expedition and aren't able to retrieve the submarine and any data it contains at this time, so it can come off as having been All for Nothing. The researchers do close out the game by stating there must be hope out there somewhere... just not here.
- Dripping Disturbance: Every so often a drip of crimson will fall from the low ceiling, reminding you that you're surrounded by blood and not simply water.
- Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The game takes place entirely at the bottom of an uncharted ocean on an alien moon where who-knows-what is living down there. And to make things even more bizarre and creepy, it's an ocean made up of blood and the update confirms it's human blood.
- The Empire: Space Station Eden, a destructive belligerent towards the COI and Filament Station thanks to their Martian ultranationalism.
- Endangered Species: Humanity itself is this. So far, there are only 725 known living humans (257 from the COI and 468 from Eden), although other polities are alluded to.
- Excuse Plot: As intriguing as it is,
Word of God admits that the game's story was created to justify why you are exploring an Alien Sea in a flimsy submarine. - The Federation: The Consolidation of Iron (COI) is an alliance between three space-stations and two spacecrafts. This is the closest thing to a government humanity has now.
- First-Person Perspective: Instead of putting you in control of the sub directly, Iron Lung has you controlling the unnamed convict inside. Of course, there's not a lot of room to move around.
- Fluffy the Terrible: The file name for the monster that eats you at the end of the game is called "Frog."
- Four Is Death: The game takes place in a fourth blood ocean within the AT-5 moon.
- The Future: More specifically, the game is set 378 EIC, or 2370 AD.
- Giant Eye of Doom: During your exploration, you are tasked with taking pictures of what is within the blood seas of the moon you are on since you cannot look out of the porthole and have to rely upon the photographs for navigation. One of the things you wind up taking a picture of is a massive sea monster's eyeball staring directly at you, which roars and knocks at your submarine before swimming away.
- Hell Is That Noise: You'll hear some unusual sounds from behind the rusty iron separating you from the crushing depths. The game is mostly quiet, apart from the sound of the submarines propellers, which will have you questioning the cause of everything you can hear outside.
- Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: The colonisation of Mars brought this trope along: See Alternative Calendar.
- Humans Are Bastards: Even when the universe faces an existential crisis and humanity is reduced to possibly less than 1000 members, Eden is still suicidally petty and short-sighted enough to destroy the Filament Station and hasten their own species' extinction.
- Infodump: The COI Informational Terminal found at the aft of the submarine contains various tidbits of lore behind the forlorn universe of Iron Lung, with many bits redacted. Information surrounding the blood ocean in particular is withheld from you to preserve the fear of the unknown. There's also a secret message left by some COI insider within the terminal that can be accessed by typing in "SM-8," the designation of a wrecked submarine that can be found at a hidden secret location in version 2 of the game.
- Interface Screw: While approaching one point of interest, the game screen becomes slightly distorted, which worsens the closer you get. It's implied that something in this area is messing with your head.
- Jump Scare: Aside from the occasional sudden loud noises coming from outside the sub, the game is largely devoid of them. The exception is a massive one at the end when something tears its way into the sub, which the game had been building up to the entire time.
- Just Before the End: Downplayed, but the entire game takes place in a pretty hopeless setting, with the rest of humanity, as well as most planets and stars, completely gone. Gradually, this mission is revealed to be a last-ditch attempt and essentially a Targeted Human Sacrifice.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The nature of the Quiet Rapture is left to this. On one hand, the fact that the vanished stars still emit ghostlight seems to suggest that the event followed the laws of physics, raising the possibility that it is a natural phenomenon. On the other hand, the SM-13's terminal claims that nobody witnessed the disappearance of a planet, which seems hard to believe unless something of inconceivable power is at play.
- Minimalism: The entirety of the game is based around this, given that it's never explained if the habitable planets and all the stars suddenly ceased to exist during the "Quiet Rapture" or were taken to another dimension or somewhere far far away, as the name would potentially suggest. There's also the fact that it's stated that the blood oceans on the moons are made out of HUMAN blood, although it's unknown if it's "just" human blood with no actual owner, or if it's what happened to the humans on the habitable planets.
- Minimalist Cast: The player is the only character who 'appears' onscreen (the game takes place in first-person, so the player is a First-Person Ghost). At the start we hear the voice of one of the researchers communicating with the player, but they never physically appear. Beyond some vague references to other researchers and some kind of governing body, there's only two characters. It helps highlight the player's sense of isolation down in the depths. It's sort of Justified, as the entire human race has been reduced to a total of 725 known humans.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The eponymous submarine itself. Would you really want to be aboard a submarine named after a medical instrument widely considered to be a Fate Worse than Death, much less pilot one? Its official designation of SM-13 also counts as well, due to invoking 13 Is Unlucky.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: On the way to the final points of interest, the radar will suddenly report something right in front of the submarine, even though the map says there shouldn't be anything there. If you turn away and backtrack, the radar still says you're right up next to something. When you face the obstacle and take a picture, you're met with a giant eyeball staring into the camera. The monster that you just blinded responds by ramming the sub before swimming away, likely why you start to take on blood and ultimately get attacked at the final point of interest.
- Non-Standard Game Over: If you fail to extinguish the fire that breaks out in the back of the sub, the fire eats away at the sub's oxygen supply and blows up, resulting in a game over. This can also happen if the player burns themselves to death.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- Much of the game's tension and scares comes from this. The player has extremely limited vision of the world outside the sub, relying only on grainy black and white snapshots. All these confirm is that there is definitely something out there but we're never quite sure what or where that something is.
- The Cosmic Horror of this game's setting is also based on this. There's no explanation as to why the "quiet rapture" happened, what it really is, or where all the stars and habitable planets went, along with the people on them; why it is that uninhabitable moons and space stations, along with the people on those stations, were the only thing left, and why they were excluded from its effects; or whether the blood oceans existed before the rapture or not, and why they are made out of blood.
- The Radio Dies First: During the intro, your radio communication with the researchers who sent you in is severed as the submarine is lowered deeper into the ocean.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: The submarine has a depth gauge, which bottoms out around 30 seconds into the 40-second descent.
- Retraux: The game intentionally uses PS1-style graphics, which helps make things creepier as the already-grainy photos are even more difficult to decipher.
- Ribcage Ridge: Several of the points of interest appear to be gigantic bones, implying the existence of life forms living within the blood. They do exist. They're not friendly.
- Rising Water, Rising Tension: As the story nears its climax, bloody water begins to slowly leak into the shoddy submarine, rising steadily higher until it's almost covered the control panel. It's so dark in the sub the player may not even notice at first.
- Rivers of Blood: A whole ocean of blood in this case. How it came to exist is never revealed. It gets even more bizarre when a terminal entry reveals that the ocean is made from human blood.
- Sci-Fi Horror: The "Quiet Rapture" has left what little remains of humanity in a desolate universe. The survivors have become so desperate for hope, or even answers, that they have haphazardly constructed a submarine from scrap metal for the purpose of exploring an inexplicable anomaly, the ocean of blood. Someone has to pilot the Iron Lung, and who better than a hapless convict with little to lose? This is where you come in.
- Sea Monster: There's definitely at least one, possibly more, living in the blood ocean, though we never get a good look at any of them.
- Sensor Suspense: The proximity sensors near the sub controls will trigger when they detect a nearby obstacle or wall. Sometimes one of these walls may follow you as you try to move away.
- Smash to Black: An almost literal example. If you smash against a wall or a solid object, the game immediately cuts to black, with the only sound being of the submarine exploding and the player's compartment flooding. You are then promptly booted back to the title screen.
- Spooky Photographs: The big premise of the game. You are welded into a submarine and forced to navigate a trench while your only view of the outside world comes from taking still images with a front-mounted camera. These photographs are in grainy black and white, making it very hard to pick out details in them with any kind of reassuring clarity. A foreboding photograph you take at one of the locations of interest contains the face of the creature that ambushes you at the end, lurking in the background. Take another picture and the monster is gone.
- Stalker without a Crush: As the convict explores, it soon becomes apparent after multiple encounters they are not alone. Something is following them. Something big.
- The Stars Are Going Out: In the backstory something caused all the stars to disappear, leaving behind only ghostlight.
- Sub Story: The game takes place entirely inside a small submarine, the titular Iron Lung. The player can use the control panel to steer the sub towards coordinates and take snapshots with an underwater camera to get glimpses of the surrounding environment.
- Suicide Mission: The convict was always aware SM-13, while reputedly made for ocean exploring, was actually intended as a punishment, and means of execution for prisoners of war by the C.O.I. Though what they didn't expect was a giant Sea Monster would claim their life, instead of succumbing to asphyxiation.
- Teleportation: At a few points, the sub will shake along with a sound playing to give the impression that it was shoved, but there were no indicators on the sub's radar that could have implied something physical shoved the player. Even if it did, it wouldn't explain how the sub managed to go from one side of a chasm to another in a single second.
- Underwater Ruins: One of the points of interest you are tasked with photographing appears to be an artificial structure. But what is it doing within a blood trench on a distant alien moon?
- Unknown Phenomenon: A certain point of interest stands out from the rest, an inexplicable anomaly that distorts the players vision and pulses unnaturally. The cause of its existence is unanswered, not unlike many other aspects of the game.
- Wham Shot: Quite literally a part of the game's mechanics. Due to the immense pressure at the bottom of the blood ocean, the only view of outside is a crappy little camera that can only take low-resolution snapshots of what is directly in front of the vessel—and sometimes, let's just say it's better not to know what's in front of your vessel.
- What a Piece of Junk: The SM-13 is a submarine built from rusting space station parts that spends the game slowly falling apart while operating at a depth well beyond what it is certified for, meaning that its sole porthole needs to be sealed shut. Nonetheless, it does a commendable job at navigating the depths of the moon. In the end, it's an attack from a sea monster that destroys the submarine rather than the vehicle itself.
- This is not an expedition. It's an execution.
