Automaton Lung

Actual trash

Feels more like a strange experiment than anything. Originally designed as an indie game developed for 3DS, it's a super rigid platformer with weird ambient lands and amazing, otherworldy music. No text, no story, only the counter for the number of "chips" you collect in each stage. You start in a tower, but soon find a ship and fly around a strange world collecting chips and picking up new weapons. The shooting isn't bad, but the platforming is super rigid and annoying. The camera actively works against you as you collect each chip and progress to the next area. The whole game is open at the start, but you need a certain number of chips to access the final boss. She has a jetpack and can take out a futuristic hoverboard that handles like garbage but is still fun to use. Once you defeat the final boss, you go through a weird chase sequence and kill a seizure-inducing second final boss before she flies off and becomes a ball of fire with no explanation. On one hand, it's a subpar platformer, and even the simple collection items are obnoxious because the draw distance hides them and they aren't placed in any logical manner around the map. On the other hand, the weird foreign alien synthetic music just pumps strange feelings as you wander these sparse lands, fighting ducks, robots, clowns, aliens for no apparent reason. It's meaningless and yet it feels intensely beautiful at the same time. The tower levels are so small that you can easily clear all of them and go straight for the boss with little effort since you will nearly have enough chips. If you fly around the land and really explore everything, the game will plant something weird in your brain that's hard to explain. It's more than likely the amazing soundtrack that just sends you on a journey of light and sound as you progress into another plane. I recommend the experience even though the gameplay is nothing special.

Platformer with massive, bizarre environments and a weird atmosphere that's strangely fun to play despite its simple gameplay and lack of polish. I really enjoyed exploring and just taking in the areas and music. It's cool that this was one of the last games to ever be released for the 3DS.

Playing this game feels like a playing a dream Ratboy Genius would have. It's got some clunky controls, floating point precision issues, collision issues, highly experimental level design and a very early ps2 type controller set. And as ironic as that may be, that all make this game shine in some way I didn't expect it to. The level of freedom the developer had, the feeling of being in a bizarre dream all the time, everything kinda just fits together in a way that I struggle to imagine most people being able to even understand. It is truly inspiring to see the amount of content and idea this game tries and experiments, and how it evolves. It's REALLY rough around many corners, but I feel like just "forcing through those rough edges" makes this experience so insanely unique that I couldn't even explain. Really wish it has low res LCD filters to truly encapsulate the 3DS feeling. Also, feels like the sort of game to play on LSD. Though don't tell anyone I said that.

This game makes me feel things in a good way. Simple, desolate, beautiful. Get this game.

Automaton Lung has this compelling, unknowable mystique about. All the expected essentials of a classic game adventure are here – the platforming challenges, the collectibles, the power-ups, the exploration. And yet there’s always a sense of missing context, an intentional emptiness. That search for greater meaning bolsters the already liminal atmosphere. As a player you are made tensely aware of the role context and narrative play in feeling purpose and achievement. In their absence, the mind cannot help but attempt to create them. It’s role play in the wake of abstraction. In the game’s final moments that search takes on even greater weight – “if I leave this mortal coil I deserve to feel some pride”. The hollow disposition within Automaton Lung is best appreciated on its native platform, the 3DS, as navigating its unnatural, abstract terrain mirrored the uncanny emptiness which came with navigating the 3DS eShop in its dying days, a barren landscape which felt deserted well before its final twilight. But even blown up onto a high definition monitor, it’s a great jaunt through alien landscapes. The architecture is artificial, the terrain laid out in ways which are decidedly navigable only in a video game space, where double jumps and hover boards propel you past human limitation. The environments play with verticality in some really interesting and uncommon ways for a collectathon. Even for a video game, movement is strange, with that double jump really part of a boost action, and the hover board sports pitiful acceleration and turning while also boasting a slow fall and a high speed ceiling; it all makes for peculiar but potent navigation options. Combat is unwieldy, either brain-dead with the aggressive lock-on, or clumsy without it. Enemies, sparse as they are, are easy to ignore, only adding to the desolate feeling throughout the world. There are multiple weapons to find, but they’re underutilized, in part because the game inadvertently leads you away from finding them until you’re well along into your adventure. The weapons also have no exploratory utility – the most obvious example: There’s no cracked wall to blow up with the explosive gun, sadly. The core goal is to amass collectibles to eventually unlock the gate to the finale. Automaton Lung does a great job of distilling the essence of gratification – it’s a video game, and it feels good to see the number go up. So too does it delight to pick up lots of speed and soar across a level with the hover board. And I still feel such wonder when exiting the elevator at the bottom floor and entering a ship to wander that wide open overworld, free to explore numerous new locales, teeming as they are with far more collectibles than those earlier, smaller areas. Exploring Automaton Lung is such a delightful experience. The rooms are memorably unique, and the world feels like the husk of an unfinished game, but in a liminal way that feels intentional and realized. It became one of my favorite 3DS games in its last days, and it remains a compelling adventure even when divorced of that meta-context.

Nice little game that got me thinking about the potential of game engines to create unique, abstract spaces. A bit pricey at $15 for the experience offered but an easy recommendation on sale

Experimental third person exploration game originally for the 3DS, but now in full quality. even though combat is simple, the worlds and atmosphere are very fun to explore. highly recommended.

Man, I really liked this a lot. Full words are on my site linked below, but in short the dreamscape nature of the game and the different movement style it's built around are genuinely excellent. I collected all 210 cards, got all the weapons, and just generally really loved my time with the game. Was already looking forward to Automaton Heart, but it's like really shot up on my "can't wait for this game" list now. Anyway, full words here if you're curious for more thoughts: www.pressplaygaming.net/articles/2025/10/23/automaton-lung-or-dreamscapes-and-joy-in-3d-platforming

I recommend this with a large caveat. Automaton Lung isn't a good game - that's not to say I didn't have fun getting 100% of the achievements, or didn't rock out to the soundtrack, or gel with the light 3d platforming and lock-on third person shooting. It's just that the game completely lacks polish and in some instances seems to be actively unfinished. And yet, it works. The music, the movement, the surreal landscapes and geometry, the absolutely bonkers ending... this is why I love indie games. Very excited to see what else this dev does.