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Games Like Iron Lung: Horror Seen Through Instruments

Iron Lung seals you in a windowless submarine at the bottom of an ocean of blood and lets you see the outside only through coordinates and slow, grainy photographs. These games share that fear of working instruments in a small, sealed place while something you cannot see waits outside.

The games

8 of the 9 games in this guide are not on Switch and are left out. Show them all.

  1. DREDGE key art: a small fishing boat with lit windows beside a red and white lighthouse under a dark sky, with tentacles and strange fish in the green water below PsychologicalDREDGEA longer, calmer voyage: a fishing trawler by day, a cosmic dread in the fog and the deep at night.

MOLE is the closest in feel: you are the Navigator of a colossal drilling vessel whose crew has vanished, working its gauges and terminals by hand as you bore deeper and a Signal calls from below. Duskers puts the whole game behind screens: you pilot drones through dark derelict spaceships by typing commands, seeing only failing camera feeds and a motion sensor that says something is aboard but not what.

For more time under the sea, Static Dread: The Submarine makes you the captain's right hand on a nuclear submarine cut off in the North Atlantic, assigning a frightened crew and reading sonar contacts that may be another vessel or something ancient. Barotrauma takes a crew of friends under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa, where sea monsters strike the hull and leaks, fires or a traitor can sink everyone. Sinking Iron is a short, free dive into a flooding wreck after an undersea earthquake.

If you liked the lonely post more than the sea, Static Dread: The Lighthouse leaves you alone after a cataclysm, guiding ships by radio past waters where crews vanish, and Voices of the Void, free on itch.io, has you pull signals from space with radio dishes at a mountain research base, some of them unexplainable. I'm on Observation Duty keeps the horror on a screen: watch camera feeds of an apartment all night and report every change.

DREDGE is the long, gentler version: a small fishing trawler, calm by day, with a cosmic dread in the fog and the deep water after dark.

If you only try one, play MOLE for the closest feel, or Duskers if you want every danger behind a screen.

Questions

What games are like Iron Lung?

MOLE, Duskers and Static Dread: The Submarine share its fear of working instruments in a sealed vessel while something waits outside.

Are there free games like Iron Lung?

Yes: Voices of the Void (name your own price on itch.io) and Sinking Iron (pay what you want on Game Jolt).

Is there a multiplayer game like Iron Lung?

Barotrauma is the closest: a crew of friends runs a submarine under the ice of Europa together.

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