Titanic Sub Search Causes Sales Spike for Indie Horror Game

"Truth is stranger than fiction" - a quote one indie game developer now believes due to recent events.

David Szymanski, the developer of the indie horror game Iron Lung, has recently stated that the sudden sale spike of his game "feels wrong" due to current events unfolding similarly in his game.

Szymanski released Iron Lung on Mar. 10, 2022, to critical acclaim; gamers who played the game gave it "very positive" reviews on Steam due to its unique take on horror.

Reality Mimicking Fiction

The search for OceanGate Expedition's minivan-sized Titan submersible had reached a critical stage - the life-sustaining oxygen within it would only last until 7 AM ET on June 22, meaning that time is running out for the rescuers finding the imperiled sub and the five people trapped within the vehicle, per Reuters and USA Today.

The submersible is part of OceanGate Expedition's operations, which hosts treks two miles below the ocean's surface to explore the wreck of the Titanic for $250,000 per person. Unfortunately, the sub, which contains the company's CEO and four other people, got lost in a part of the ocean that was around 13,000 feet in depth.

Oddly enough, this real-life tragedy mimics the story behind an indie horror game, Iron Lung, wherein the player pilots a tiny, aging submarine through an ocean of blood on an alien moon, per the game's Steam webpage.

During their descent, players are blind to the outside world due to their sub not having windows; they use a grainy still camera to survey their surroundings and an incomplete satellite map and proximity sensors to navigate their sub.

The similarities - and the dark humor related to it - aren't lost to gamers, which resulted in a recent sale spike in the game. Szymanski posted a picture of the game's sales graph on Twitter, saying it "feels so wrong" for its caption.

He would later post another tweet acknowledging the dark humor in the game's Steam page and similarities between his game and what's occurring in the Atlantic. "I made Iron Lung the most nightmarish thing I could think of," Szymanski said. "Knowing real people are in that situation right now is pretty horrific, even if it was their own bad decisions."

He then added that while the jokes surrounding the game and the incident are hilarious, he admitted that nobody should have to (SPOILER!) die like the unfortunate player character in Iron Lung.

Iron Lung Story

Iron Lung's story is already horrific on its own. The game's Steam page states that every known star and habitable planet mysteriously vanished, along with whatever and whoever happened to be on them at the time, leaving an empty universe of asteroids and lifeless moons where the only remnants of humanity and civilization are those who were on space stations or starships at the time.

With supplies running low and infrastructure falling into disrepair, survivors spent years unsuccessfully searching for any trace of natural resources until they found a Blood Ocean on an otherwise barren moon.

The player character was then picked to investigate the anomaly and photograph what they find there before the aging sub collapses around them or they're discovered by whatever lurks within the anomalous ocean.