Iron Lung
Games review
As of Aug 12, 2026, Iron Lung is rated 92% positive on Steam (11,127 reviews).
Opens Iron Lung's own site, not a review site.
Is Iron Lung worth it in 2026?
Iron Lung earns its 92% positive rating by doing one thing exceptionally well: manufacturing dread through what you cannot see, cramming you into a submarine with a tiny camera as your only window into an ocean of blood on an alien moon. The horror works precisely because the gameplay is stripped to near-nothing, but that minimalism is also a genuine failure for a meaningful portion of players, not just a trade-off they accepted: the entire mechanical loop is pressing a handful of buttons repeatedly to navigate between coordinates, and five reviewers call it outright boring rather than artfully spare. Compounding this, the game is roughly 90 minutes long with limited replayability, and three reviewers specifically flag the ending as anticlimactic or terrible, a structural problem for an experience built entirely on sustained tension. The price question is really a content question: this game is short and thin, and sale pricing just makes the shortness sting less.
Horror fans who prioritize atmosphere and psychological dread over mechanical depth, agency, or cathartic payoff, and who are willing to wait for a sale.
The gameplay loop is genuinely repetitive, the runtime is roughly 90 minutes with little reason to return, and the ending is widely reported as anticlimactic, meaning the tension the game builds may not pay off.
ReviewPond's conclusion, drawn only from the verified scores and review themes below. Not a paid or editorial opinion.
Pros
- atmospheric tension and dread15
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- Markiplier sold me a video game Seriously though, this game is pretty neat. It's quite short but the premise, the atmosphere and the exploration aspects are pretty cool. Would be...
- I understand why you'd wanna make a movie out of this, seeing such a big thing through just one tiny submarine makes everything so much scarier. What you can't see is far scarier t...
- It's great, finished in 90 mins, but i'm sure i could have exlopred more. Play it before you watch the movie. Absolutely no bugs or anything like that. The use of the camera is so...
- short but impactful experience8
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- Markiplier sold me a video game Seriously though, this game is pretty neat. It's quite short but the premise, the atmosphere and the exploration aspects are pretty cool. Would be...
- A really neat game that does a lot with very little. It should only last you about and hour so the concept doesn't overstay its welcome. Can't really say it's worth the full price...
- It's great, finished in 90 mins, but i'm sure i could have exlopred more. Play it before you watch the movie. Absolutely no bugs or anything like that. The use of the camera is so...
- effective horror with limited visibility7
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- I understand why you'd wanna make a movie out of this, seeing such a big thing through just one tiny submarine makes everything so much scarier. What you can't see is far scarier t...
- It's great, finished in 90 mins, but i'm sure i could have exlopred more. Play it before you watch the movie. Absolutely no bugs or anything like that. The use of the camera is so...
- There's no words for how good the atmosphere in this game is. How well it sets the feeling of being trapped in a place of no return. It's so good. Even when the game is almost n...
- creative premise and world-building5
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- Markiplier sold me a video game Seriously though, this game is pretty neat. It's quite short but the premise, the atmosphere and the exploration aspects are pretty cool. Would be...
- It's pretty good for a short game. It isn't much and if you know the main jist of the game then you pretty much know everything. The lore is pretty good and I think the horror is e...
- I found this game through Markipliers movie, as a lot of people probably did. And at first I'm like "Why would Markiplier make an entire movie out of a seemingly random indie game?...
- well-implemented controls and mechanics4
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- It's great, finished in 90 mins, but i'm sure i could have exlopred more. Play it before you watch the movie. Absolutely no bugs or anything like that. The use of the camera is so...
- Iron Lung is a very interesting and creative take on retro\VHS horror. As a player, you are essentially trapped in a single location and have to navigate almost blind, searching fo...
- I'm a horror game fanatic, and iron lung takes the cake for the most intense scare I've ever experienced in a game. This game delivers a sense of dread and helplessness, a fear of...
- good value on sale4
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- A really neat game that does a lot with very little. It should only last you about and hour so the concept doesn't overstay its welcome. Can't really say it's worth the full price...
- A very short, but great experience. The idea is simple but executed well. The atmosphere is great, played it in one sitting and wound up beating it without crashing into a wall lol...
- Nice concept, but a bit boring. Theres not enough anomalies compared to the time you spend checking if your submarine is where it needs to be on a coordinated map. I would still sa...
Cons
- repetitive boring gameplay5
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- Honestly, the game is pretty okay. Not much more. The atmosphere is great, but a game is more than just that. The gameplay loop is just pressing a few buttons and it gets really re...
- Atmosphere is awesome but gameplay is boring as f*ck. 7/10
- Nice concept, but a bit boring. Theres not enough anomalies compared to the time you spend checking if your submarine is where it needs to be on a coordinated map. I would still sa...
- not worth full price5
see reviews +-
- A really neat game that does a lot with very little. It should only last you about and hour so the concept doesn't overstay its welcome. Can't really say it's worth the full price...
- Honestly, the game is pretty okay. Not much more. The atmosphere is great, but a game is more than just that. The gameplay loop is just pressing a few buttons and it gets really re...
- A very short, but great experience. The idea is simple but executed well. The atmosphere is great, played it in one sitting and wound up beating it without crashing into a wall lol...
- limited content and replayability5
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- good short little game, kinda wish there was a little more variety, but it's good.
- It's pretty good for a short game. It isn't much and if you know the main jist of the game then you pretty much know everything. The lore is pretty good and I think the horror is e...
- The tension is center stage here; there's not a lot of jumpscares or gore or anything like that, most of it is just a slow buildup of things slowly going wrong while you race again...
- slow navigation and controls3
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- Honestly, the game is pretty okay. Not much more. The atmosphere is great, but a game is more than just that. The gameplay loop is just pressing a few buttons and it gets really re...
- I first found out about this game through Pyrocinicals 2022 video. I don't really play horror games, so It wasn't interesting to me. I then watched Markipliers movie which piqued m...
- I don't understand the hype about it. The idea is interesting, but the fact that the game dev expects you to spend your entire life searching for a tunnel in the wall with the slow...
- disappointing or anticlimactic ending3
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- This is a boring 1 and half hour game that ends with a pretty terrible ending. Atmosphere is good and suspense too but this game is not good for the amount of time it takes to play...
- I'm all for an atmospheric underwater horror game in retro graphics, but after cruising around painfully slowly, while the only visual input you get is an occasional picture of lan...
- Pretty disappointed after hearing all the hype for this game, finished it in under an hour and it was not good at all.
Themes and quotes are drawn from 40 sampled reviews with text; the scores above reflect all 11.1K ratings. Counts are how many of the sampled reviews mention each point.