YMMV / Iron Lung

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: The sea monster that chases you around. Are there more of them lurking all around or is it just one? On that note, is the single creature taking its time to attack you because it’s weakening you down or hunting and playing with its food (as we see with the glowing lure on one of the photos that’s likely the monster’s lure)?
• Broken Base: There's a divide between the game's fans over whether or not the game's setting should be further explored, with one side thinking the game works best because almost nothing is explained and it should be left at that, and the other side thinking the setting is too intriguing and full of possibilities to remain as just background dressing for a short one-off game.
• Funny Moments: The System Requirements tab on its Steam page, more specifically those related to the graphics, which lists the Processor and Graphics as "Any made within the last decade", and an additional note that says "You can run this" as a jab towards the game's low-poly graphics.
  • Putting crass language into the log computer will chastise you for being unprofessional. Because that's our biggest worry down here.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In June 2023 when the OceanGate Titan Submersible exploring the wreckage of the RMS Titanic imploded, resulting in the death of its five occupants, some people immediately started snidely comparing the situation to the game and making fun of the whole ordeal. David made his thoughts clear on Twitter.
  I definitely see the dark humor in this whole Titanic sub thing, it's just... like, I made Iron Lung the most nightmarish thing I could think of, and knowing real people are in that situation right now is pretty horrific, even if it was their own bad decisions. Like all the jokes I've been seeing are hilarious but also good lord nobody should have to die like that.
• Memetic Mutation: "Retroactively Based on a True Story."^ExplanationThe sudden disappearance and subsquent destruction of the OceanGate Titan Submersible that was used to tour the Titanic in June of 2023 has caused a surge of interest in the game, with many comparing its shoddy and poorly-thought out design as being on par or somehow worse than the titular Iron Lung.
• Narm Charm: The oceans of blood themselves. Normally such a thing would be considered highly cliché at best, and something out of an abysmal, bottom-of-the-barrel creepypasta at worst, but due to the horror of the game's setting being based off of Nothing Is Scarier, as well as the general incredibly oppressive and haunting atmosphere it manages to be a genuinely unsettling concept due to there being no explanation as to WHY they exist, or if they even existed before the also unexplained "quiet rapture".
• Special Effects Failure: Likely unintentional, but if you manage to take a picture of the angler fish-like sea monster at a good angle and distance, you'll see that its model is only a head (and it's possible to clip through without being attacked or crashing into it). The same model is also used for the Jump Scare at the end of the game (while it clips through the left part of the submarine's interior).

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