Automaton Lung

An interesting little game, worth getting on sale if you like collectathon platformers. + Plenty of things to collect, and the process of collecting them is tricky enough to be interesting. ~ Minimalist to the point of emptiness, but it does manage to hit on that liminal space vibe in the process. ~ Leaves you to figure absolutely everything out on your own, to the point you could be forgiven for not realizing there's a world map without having read the reviews, discussions, or achievements. - Quite short, only a couple hours to 100%.

This game is so playful and charming and free when it comes 2 environment art and level design. Reminds me of source maps and MDK and mario64 in that way

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.

sick, one of the best games

I went from "this game is too ♥♥♥♥♥♥ even for me", to obsessively 100%ing over the course of about 5 hours. Simplicity and ambiance go a very long way. A very chill and slow paced collectathon with idiosyncratic charms.

The title itself suggests a machine going through the motions out of habit rather than necessity well after its expiration date, and it’s hard to tell if this is a game about something forgotten or just one that forgot what it was supposed to be. Born within the eerie silence of the early days of the pandemic and launched on the dying Nintendo 3DS eShop, the game carries within it a dual sense of vacancy and decay. Both aesthetically and kinesthetically an “unfinished” videogame, the appeal comes from the quiet contemplation one allows of its frictionless and entropic world and soothing repetitive soundtrack that often reminds you of old empty multiplayer maps or weird old tech demo CD, and the little moments of awe come from discovering the existence of a world map after completing a series of linear levels or the surreal joy of speeding through Giorgio de Chirico like landscapes on your hoverboard. Each collected item is less a goal or a mechanic of progress and more like a gravestone signalling the last remnants of meaning available to exploration as there is no joyful feedback loop to gain from it, only a confirmation that there’s nothing else to find in vaporware. There’s something oddly affecting about how little this game does and how genuinely disconnected it is. Not ironic, post-modern or try-hard retro, it just kind of exists in this post-cultural vacuum. And I do believe there is meaning to be taken from the main character’s automaton nature. Escaping from its tube chamber, it has no other choice or reason but to explore and conquer what its limited world has to offer, executing behaviors out of lingering code and long-abandoned instructions that turn its movements into a ritual. The automaton doesn’t explore for joy or reward, only because it was made to. In that, it captures something quietly human.

Top 1 game of all time