Bloober Team has spent years building a reputation as one of gaming’s most dedicated horror studios, and The Medium represents their most ambitious swing. The central pitch is immediately compelling: a horror game where you simultaneously exist in two realities, the physical world and the spirit world, rendered side by side in real time. It’s a technical showcase and a narrative hook rolled into one, promising a kind of horror experience that no other game had attempted at this scale.
The reality of playing The Medium, unfortunately, doesn’t always match the excitement of that premise. Players broadly agree that the game creates some truly memorable moments and boasts one of the better horror antagonists in recent memory. They also agree that stretches of the game feel like untapped potential, where the dual-reality concept could have pushed gameplay in fascinating directions but instead settles for something more conventional. It’s a game that’s easier to admire than to love.
The Maw and the Mirror World
The dual-reality presentation is The Medium’s defining feature, and when it works, it’s spectacular. The screen splits to show both worlds simultaneously, each rendered with distinct art direction. The real world is muted and decaying, all Soviet-era concrete and institutional neglect. The spirit world warps those same spaces into something organic and nightmarish, with skin-like membranes, bone structures, and imagery that owes a clear debt to the paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski. The contrast between these two simultaneous views creates an unease that traditional horror games can’t replicate.
The Maw stands out as the game’s greatest creative success. Voiced with unsettling menace by Troy Baker, this spirit world entity pursues Marianne throughout the game with a predatory intelligence that makes every encounter tense. The character design is disturbing without being cartoonish, and Baker’s performance gives The Maw a personality that elevates it beyond a standard horror antagonist. Players consistently name The Maw as the element that stayed with them after finishing the game.
Akira Yamaoka’s contribution to the soundtrack adds another layer of quality. His compositions for the spirit world sequences carry the same melancholic dread that defined his work on classic horror titles, while Arkadiusz Reikowski’s score handles the real-world segments with subtlety. The two soundtracks playing in tandem during split-screen sequences creates an audio experience as layered as the visual one.
The narrative tackles heavy themes including childhood trauma, abuse, and cycles of violence with more care than Bloober Team’s earlier work. Marianne’s journey to the abandoned Niwa resort gradually reveals a history of genuine horror, the human kind, that grounds the supernatural elements in something painfully real.
Niwa’s Empty Corridors
The most persistent criticism of The Medium is that it doesn’t do enough with its own concept. The dual-reality mechanic is primarily visual. Gameplay interactions between the two worlds are limited to a handful of puzzle types that repeat throughout the experience: activate something in the spirit world to change the real world, or vice versa. Players who came in expecting the kind of reality-bending puzzle design that the premise suggests were left wanting more complexity.
The game leans heavily on walking and exploration at a pace that many find too slow. Fixed camera angles, while atmospherically effective, create occasional navigation frustration, particularly in the spirit world where paths aren’t always clear. The game rarely asks the player to do anything mechanically challenging, and the puzzles that do appear tend toward the simple side of things.
Stealth sequences with The Maw are another divisive element. These sections force Marianne to crouch behind cover and hold her breath to avoid detection, but the mechanics feel underdeveloped. Trial and error replaces genuine tension in these moments, and the fixed camera sometimes obscures threats. Several players report that their most frustrating moments came during these stealth encounters rather than during the atmospheric exploration that the game does well.
The ending has also drawn mixed reactions. Without spoiling specifics, many players felt the conclusion raised more questions than it answered and that certain narrative threads were abandoned rather than resolved. For a game so invested in its story, an unsatisfying ending weighs heavily on the overall impression.
Horror That You Watch More Than Play
The Medium’s central tension is one that affects many narrative horror games: the balance between cinematic experience and interactive gameplay. Bloober Team clearly prioritized atmosphere, story, and visual spectacle, and in those areas, the game often excels. But the trade-off is a gameplay experience that sometimes feels passive, where you’re guiding Marianne through a haunted house tour rather than actively surviving a horror scenario.
This isn’t necessarily a failure. Many players enjoy horror games precisely for their atmospheric storytelling, and The Medium delivers that effectively. The problem is that the dual-reality mechanic creates an expectation of gameplay innovation that the game doesn’t fulfill. When you split the screen to show two simultaneous realities, players naturally expect those realities to interact in complex, surprising ways. The Medium uses the concept mostly for visual drama and simple puzzle gates, which can feel like a missed opportunity.
Should You Play The Medium?
If you value atmosphere, visual design, and narrative in your horror games above mechanical challenge, The Medium has a lot to offer. The dual-reality presentation is visually unique, The Maw is a fantastic antagonist, and the story, despite its stumbles at the end, tackles its themes with conviction. Fans of classic fixed-camera horror games will find familiar comfort in the structure, updated with modern production values.
Pass on this one if you want your horror games to challenge you mechanically or if you find slow-paced exploration tedious. The Medium is closer to a narrative adventure with horror elements than a survival horror game, and players expecting the latter will be disappointed. If you also need your stories tied up neatly, the ending may frustrate.
The Verdict on The Medium
The Medium is a game with a brilliant hook and strong production values that doesn’t quite push its central concept far enough. The dual-reality visuals are impressive, The Maw is deeply menacing, and the atmosphere of Niwa resort is thick with dread. But the gameplay beneath that striking surface is simpler than it should be, and the narrative stumbles at the finish line. It’s a worthwhile experience for horror fans who prioritize mood over mechanics, but it leaves you imagining the more ambitious game it could have been.