Building comparison
head to head
Iron LungvsThe Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is execution, and it is a single point.
Iron Lung
Variance · Light / Casual
Claustrophobic horror short about piloting a blind submarine through a blood ocean.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Optimization · Light / Casual
A gorgeous first-person mystery about piecing together a boy's disappearance.
Iron Lung leans Variance (Light / Casual); The Vanishing of Ethan Carter leans Optimization (Light / Casual).
Iron LungThe Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Axis by axis
Execution2 vs 1
Iron Lung leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
Iron Lung
Slow submarine piloting by coordinates
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Walking and looking, nothing more
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Iron Lung
The thing outside follows a script
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
No opponent
Variance3 vs 2
Iron Lung leans a little harder on variance, though the gap is small.
Iron Lung
Blind navigation; you see only camera snapshots
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
The mystery is hidden only until discovered
Optimization3 vs 3
Same score on optimization - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Iron Lung
Plotting waypoints on the paper map
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Reconstructing event sequences is light deduction
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.