The Medium dated for December 10, 2020 on Xbox Series X|S and PC

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Bloober Team, the Polish studio behind Layers of Fear, Observer and Blair Witch, announced in October 2020 that The Medium, its third-person psychological horror game, would arrive on December 10, 2020. The game would be one of the first console-exclusive releases for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and would also launch on PC, with pre-orders open on Steam, the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store.

The big idea of The Medium is its protagonist, Marianne, a medium who lives in the physical world and the spirit world at the same time. At various moments, the screen shows both realities side by side, and the player solves puzzles using what they see in each. The story takes place in 1999 Poland, in an abandoned Communist-era resort, the Niwa, where Marianne goes in search of a man who claims to know the origin of her powers.

Along with the date, the studio released a video about the art direction. According to Bloober Team, the dark look of the spirit world was inspired by the surrealist work of Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński. The soundtrack brought together Arkadiusz Reikowski, the studio’s in-house composer, and Akira Yamaoka, of the Silent Hill series: Yamaoka handled the physical realm, and Reikowski the spiritual one. Troy Baker voices the main antagonist, the Maw.

The game’s idea had existed since 2012, but was shelved because rendering two perspectives at the same time was too demanding for the consoles of that era. The project only got off the ground when Microsoft showed studios what the Xbox Series X|S would be capable of.

What came next

The December date didn’t hold: because of the pandemic, The Medium was delayed to January 28, 2021, when it launched on Xbox Series X|S and PC. It later arrived on PlayStation 5 on September 3, 2021, and on Nintendo Switch as a cloud version in 2023. Reviews ranged from “generally favorable” to “mixed or average” on Metacritic, depending on the platform, and the studio said the game paid for itself within days of release.