Iron Fish Preview

Iron Fish is a psychological horror game set at the bottom of the ocean that is set to give me galeophobia - a fear of sharks. Not because the sharks in this game are your true antagonist - that title goes to something else entirely - but because they’re just always there, freaking you out. Iron Fish has done psychological horror really well, building a tense atmosphere with a variety of elements with only three jumpscares, one of which you could almost count as optional.

Firstly, the water in this game looks great. You can’t really see it, but through a clever mix of shaders and particle effects it really feels like you’re deep underwater at what would otherwise be a bone-crushing depth. The reason you’re not is revealed at the start: your suit allows you to stay at depths previously unreachable outside a submarine, leaving you free to swim around at the bottom of the ocean. It’s dark down there too; while vague outlines could be seen details were completely hidden until activating your suit’s torch.

The suit can’t, however, retain oxygen for very long so you’ll find yourself returning to your one-person submarine regularly to refuel your tanks. This is something that always put me on edge; making the decision to swim further away or return to the submarine to make sure I didn’t asphyxiate certainly adds a little tension to a scenario. Just ask any Sonic fans.

We're gonna need a bigger boat

Though while Iron Fish doesn’t have a childhood-defining tune to indicate you’re on the cusp of dying, it does have Marshall: a surface-dwelling guide who provides you with waypoints and tips to survive at 300m below the surface. When your oxygen tanks are starting to get empty, he’ll pipe up over the radio to remind you to return to the submarine - and it’s an order rather than a friendly request. While Marshall does seem to be looking out for you, there’s something about him that I don’t trust: there were a few times in the preview build that he seems to weasel his way out of questions that the player character Cerys asks him and I’m not convinced by it.

This is something I was really pleased by: it’s clear from the very beginning that this is a world that has some thought behind it. There is a story being told in Iron Fish: one that is equal parts intriguing and terrifying, which is exactly how you get people to keep playing your horror game. I won’t say much for the story because there wasn’t much there, mostly worldbuilding and plot progression, but I really hope for the final game that there are more logs to find out in the ocean to tell us more.

Joining you as you swim around are a huge variety of fish and whales, with two blue whales swimming in tandem in an opening section of the game. These creatures look amazingly detailed - though I’ve only really seen a shark up close. The sharks are aggressive swimmers, and though they didn’t actually attack me their closeness put me on edge: as I said at the top of this preview I’m developing galeophobia because of those sharks. That said, I did encounter a few of them that were less scary and more immersion breaking due to their refusal to obey the laws of physics and their glee at just passing through the walls of a sunken ship in circles. These ghost sharks were the only real bug I encountered, though I think in general the shark AI could do with being a little more menacing and unpredictable.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming

On the topic of improvements, I think the controls could do with some improvements: having the depth controls on the arrow keys meant that I had to take my hand off the mouse and find the arrow keys. The mouse doesn’t actually do anything inside the submarine, so why not bind the depth controls to the mouse buttons, or at the very least provide a way of rebinding controls. Also, midway through playing all the button prompts changed to show controller prompts despite me not having one plugged in, and this left me spending a few minutes trying to work out which button prompt meant what.

Iron Fish is a horror game that I’m actually looking forward to, which is unusual since I’m not normally one for horror experiences. Its great atmosphere building and very human characters - one of which I don’t trust despite having little reason not to - promise great things to come. Iron Fish is due to arrive on PC sometime in 2016.