
The Medium
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyPrices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About The Medium
As medium Marianne, explore an abandoned resort and investigate two connected realities. The physical world reveals traces of the past, while the spirit world exposes hidden truths and dangers. Solve puzzles, use supernatural abilities, and face threats only a medium can perceive. Player rating: 88% from 7,582 reviews. English full audio is available; other supported languages have subtitles.
Credits
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$5.502026-07-30 · KinguinBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 7 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22
02Before you buy
Gameplay
Explore the physical and spirit worlds, investigate surroundings, solve puzzles and use supernatural abilities to defend against threats.
Controls and language
The Steam PC version has full controller support. English has full audio; other supported languages are listed with subtitles.
03Frequently asked questions
What is The Medium about?
Medium Marianne investigates a mystery tied to an abandoned resort while moving between the physical and spirit worlds.
Does it support controllers?
Yes. The Steam PC version has full controller support.
What language options are listed?
English has full audio. Other supported languages are listed with subtitles.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
Full video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53WOf9ZK17M Summarized version below! Nearly eight years after it was originally announced, The Medium has finally been released. I’m a huge fan of such horror games and – while I didn’t play Blair Witch – I did enjoy Layers of Fear 2, so I was pretty excited to jump into this one. Gameplay: The main thing setting The Medium apart from the crowd is its focus on dual-reality puzzles. These are basically split-screen segments where you control both sides simultaneously and can break off to control one at any given moment. It sounds fairly simple, but the puzzles are designed in a way that it’s actually pretty cool in practice. For example, there’s a segment where you have to uncover a spirit’s name and find its missing face in order to progress. The face is hidden in the spirit realm, whereas the name you’ll find in reality, but both require you to hop back and forth to reach each other. It does this without feeling tedious and felt more like another layer of depth to what would have been an otherwise simple puzzle. The game can get creative with this mechanic, even towards the end when I thought I had seen it all. That’s not to say that all of the puzzles are good though. It’s a bit of a toss-up, as a lot of them don’t take advantage of this dual-reality mechanic and can be something as simple as “find the object to open this door so that you can find the object in there to open the actual door you need to go through.” It never got to the point where it felt like I was doing busywork, but some of them definitely toed that line. Camera: Unlike most other modern-day horror games, The Medium is played through a series of fixed third-person cameras. This is good in that it can open up certain areas visibly and provide more impactful story scenes through expert cinematography, but bad in that it does inevitably lead to some control issues. You’ll be walking in one direction, only for the camera to suddenly shift and if you don’t adjust your movement in time, you’ll end up doing a little twirl, not heading in the direction you want. It’s definitely not as bad as some others I’ve played using fixed cameras, but worth a mention a regardless. Story: The main draw here though, at least to me, is the story, and I was rather impressed with what The Medium had to offer. It’s a psychological horror thriller mystery of sorts and one that I was immediately drawn into. The pacing is quick, yet maintains a degree of suspense, the characters aren’t cardboard and actually have a sense of humanity, and, best of all, it kept me guessing right up to the very end. It’s the type of story where I thought I knew what was going on, but it just kept throwing a curveball my way and I quite like mysteries that can do this without going completely off the rails. And the story does this with a good grasp on the concept of “show, don’t tell.” I recent played through the latest Amnesia game and was disappointed with the amount of info-dumping relegated to notes, tablets, and other text-based objects. In The Medium, there are still text-based sources, but the story constantly flips between those, actual cutscenes, and otherwise visual methods of storytelling. The story is certainly not the greatest I’ve seen from a horror game, but it’s some pretty good stuff and could probably be made into a decent movie. Length: As for the length, I remember reading that it was supposed to last 8-10 hours, but it only took me six – and I only missed a handful of achievements on top of that. I personally can’t see myself going back for 100% completion, but there are some challenge-type achievements for those that wish to do so. Music: I won’t deny, I was actually a bit disappointed here, especially given that one of the composers was Akira Yamaoka of Silent Hill fame. It’s not a bad soundtrack, but I’ve now finished the game and none of the music really stuck with me outside of the ending vocal track. Perhaps I’ll just have to give it a listen on its own, but I was kinda hoping for more there. Performance: Okay, so that’s good and all, but the big thing here is performance, and let’s just say that The Medium isn’t the greatest. In fact, it would be hard to call it anything other than bad. Now, I’ve played some pretty poorly optimized games before, but I was planning on going into this one with a fresh mindset, given that it was developed with the new Xbox Series X in mind and would likely be very difficult to run. However, that kinda went out the window when the system requirements chart was released. Not only were the specs really high, but they were all targeting not 60 fps, but 30 – automatic red flag there. Having now played the game, I can confirm that the performance is indeed bad. I’m using a Ryzen 3700x for my CPU and GTX 1070 Ti for graphics on the latest game-ready drivers for this game. And I know that card is now showing its age, but the vast majority of Steam users are still using something less powerful than it, so hopefully my experience can help those out. Seeing the system requirements, I went in fully expecting to have to drop settings to probably medium. What actually happened was a bit worse. I have a 1440p monitor, so I first had to drop to 75% resolution scaling (so the game ended up at 1080p). Then I had to drop each and every setting to either low or medium (most on low). Only then could I push 60 fps. That’s half the problem though. The other half is that this fps was not constant, not in the slightest. Even at 1080p with low-medium settings, I was constantly running into 20 fps scenes (and this is below what the system requirements showed). I would go from 100 fps in one room, to 20 in the next and then back to around 40-50 before dropping again in the next area. This happened not only in gameplay, but during cutscenes too. And what made it worse is that there’s a really annoying stutter on top of that. Entering new areas, changing between reality and the spirit realm, or even just walking in a straight line, I ran into constant stutters and frame pacing issues. And this is with the game installed on a PCIe 4 NVMe drive, so it’s not like drive speed was an issue. I mean, I understand the studio was going for a more cinematic look here, but when the fps fluctuates and stutters this wildly, there’s gotta be something wrong on the optimization front. And that’s not the only issue either. I also ran into some weird audio issues where music tracks would cut out and restart randomly and some voiced lines not playing entirely despite the subtitles showing for them. At least the controls were fine (I tested on both controller and keyboard/mouse), but the rest is just a mess. Overall: I unfortunately cannot recommend The Medium, at least, not yet. The story may be interesting and the gameplay occasionally good (although it does have its ups and downs), but the performance really kills it. 30 fps and below with constant stuttering is a personal no-go for me and unless if you’re planning to run the game at that framerate, it’s a tough sell. I’m hoping the game will receive performance patches in the future, but we’ll have to wait and see. Honestly, if you really want to play it, I would recommend doing so through Game Pass. If you’re in the US, you can literally go out and buy a box of Cheez-Its with a 14-day Game Pass code on it, so you not only get to try out the game, but get to do so while eating the objectively best snack. Follow my Steam Curator Page for more reviews + videos!Show moreShow less
sequel should be called "The Large"Show moreShow less
The Medium (BEFORE PATCH) - ⭐⭐ Status: Completed [100%] ----- Pros: ----- ✅ Incredible atmosphere and world building ✅ Lovely art direction ✅ Beautiful presentation; with ray tracing on ✅ Great voice acting performances from the leads ✅ Compelling mystery that keeps your interest ✅ Wonderful soundtrack by the composer from Silent Hill. ✅ Great sound design, really makes some of the landscapes alive ✅ Unique gameplay concept that breaks the mold ✅ Fixed cameras that is a throw back to older horror games. ✅ Some puzzles can be fun and can be unique in there own way. ✅ No impossible achievements (Including difficulty runs) ----- Cons ----- ❌ Game isn't scary. For a horror game, that's not great ❌ Tedious and gets boring fast. ❌ Strict on player interaction, feels more like guiding than a decision from the player ❌ Lack of control for the character ❌ Run speed is way too slow ❌ Tons of game mechanics that where never used to it's full potential ❌ Puzzles were way to simple ❌ AI is only path finding, which makes the villain less scary for "stealth" scenes. ❌ No boss battles or challenge ❌ Plot structure is too short and has pacing issues ❌ Some of the voice acting is the typical, bad acting ❌ Horribly optimized; with terrible frame pacing and dips ❌ No chapter selection; making the achievements for finding all notes a massive pain. ❌ Short for the price and pacing, can be completed within 6-7 hours. (If you want to play casual) ❌ Slap in the face ending. ❌ Cliche "plot twist" that really doesn't fit the games narrative. ----------------- WORTH BUYING ----------------- 🔲 No ✅ Buy On Sale 🔲 Yes [Only for the wonderful art direction and fun story, even if the ending and plot "twist" weren't a great call in my opinion.] ------------------- FINAL THOUGHTS ------------------- "The Medium is one of those games that I'm frustrated with. While the mystery is engaging and the idea of split worlds is fascinating, it all goes no where. I can see a great game here but all I get is great ideas with mediocre execution and instead of allowing the players to control Marianne in these worlds, it feels more like the developers holding our hands till the end. Wait till it's patched and on sale, it's not worth the money for this short haunted house experience."Show moreShow less
No ultrawide support in 2021 :(Show moreShow less
Short review: The Medium is a darkly, atmospheric game with a really good idea it's core that's well implemented for the most part. The voice-acting is good and the music is exceptional. The story of the Niwa hotel is an engaging one and does help to keep the game going. The game goes for a dark, moody oppressive feel to set the horror tone as opposed to jump scares, although there are a few in here but they're really well done. However, it's a full price game you'd be lucky to get more than 12 hours of gameplay out of with almost no replay value. The controls are clunky and aren't helped by the camera angles at times, especially in the chase scenes which often have loads of different camera cuts. While the story of the Niwa hotel is good, everything else around isn't. The characters aren't well-written, the mo-cap undermines the voice acting and the puzzles aren't even remotely challenging. The stealth sections are terrible and are another case of the camera angles not helping you out at all as it's often really difficult to judge how far you are from a door or an opening at times. The game is also quite poorly optomised and needs to be patched although it is perfectly playable unless you're one of those people who life seems to depend on 60fps. If want a sense of if you'll like this game or not I recommend that you ignore the truly awful live action trailer for this game and focus on the gameplay footage videos to get a sense of what the Medium is like to play. While I agree that it's not a bad game, it's definitely not worth full price. If you like the look and can get it cheaper, do that instead. Longer Review: The Medium is a third person horror game developed and Published by Bloober team. In follows the vein of previous bloober titles such as the meh Blair Witch, the pretty good Observer and the masterful Layers of Fear. It's a fair bet to say that Bloober team have found their preferred niche of game. The medium places you in the shoes of Marianne, a medium who is called out to an abandoned Polish Resort Park after receiving an ominous phone call. The Resort, called the Niwa Resort, was the scene of a massacre some years ago. Marianne puzzles her way through the resort discovering various clues and unlocking more and more of the true nature of what occurred at the resort and why you were called there. The graphics are quite good. The Medium won't be bowling anyone over with intense levels of detail but there's definitely a good deal of effort put into the artwork. But the game does have some optimisation issues and there's a good deal of grumbling online about the game running poorly on higher-end setups and that it lacks an ultrawide screen mode. For the most part however the game will be played out as either a dark greyish real world or a dark brownish spirit one. Or both. And while both worlds are perfectly serviceable, they're not very inspiring or interesting. The music is dark and oppressive and lines up perfectly with the environments and is a real treat especially coming from Silent Hill composer Akira Yamoaka and Arkadiuz Reikowski who has worked on most of Bloobers previous titles. One of the main themes of The Medium is duality and this is expressed in the most literal sense with the graphics. Mariannes' gift is shown as her existing in two worlds simultaneously. The real world screen shows us the physical signs of the atrocity, the damage, decay and destruction caused, in the spirit world we get to see these signs in a more abstract form; tentacles appear, the walls have the faces of the dead embedded into them and every surface has a slick, unclean feel to it. It also displays actions in both worlds as well, for example using a boltcutter to open a gate in the real world as well as Marianne slicing through a stitched flesh wall in the spirit world. Another example is a clock in the real world can control the passage of time in the spirit world and can be used to solve certain puzzles. There's also out of body sections which are like timed challenges to complete as Marianne can't stay out of her body for very long. Other than the solving of puzzles you'll also be tasked with releasing the trapped souls. Helping them cross over will unlock various items and areas as well as more of the history. The controls are simple enough and don't hinder you as you pick your way through the rubble of the Niwa hotel although they can be quite clunky at times particularly in scenes that feature a lot of camera cuts, such as the chase scenes. Thankfully the story is a deep enough one to keep you going through all that, I really did want to find out more about what had happened at Niwa and it's paced well enough so that you're always left just wanting a little more. In terms of horror the game does a remarkable job of it. Thankfully Bloober team have decided that jump scares aren't a good basis for horror and have gone with a dark and atmospheric tone throughout the game to establish the fear and the haunting soundtrack perfectly reinforces the gloom, making you feel trapped and pursued gradually without you really noticing it until you're a bundle of nerves and have to switch off for the night and then you're debating if you should be sleeping with the lights on. Although there are a few jump scares in here, they're few and far between and really well used, in particular one in opening hour of the game that legit had me jumping right out of my seat and dropping my controller. The voice acting is quite good, the sound design is very well done also and I really can't say enough about how great the music and soundtrack is. Unfortunately we've reached the high water mark of my positivity about the Medium. Mainly while the story of the hotel is deep and engaging, the characters are much less so. Marianne has supposedly been a Medium her entire life and yet is constantly scared of everything that goes on around her as if this is the first time she is seeing anything. She states that she has helped over a 1000 souls cross over, has she never encountered one that was angry or violent? She also seems to be completely unaware of any of her powers. How did she not know before she could create shields or power electrical items with her spirit energy? It's almost as if she's never attempted to explore her powers at all. Even if she had, we wouldn't know it. We're given little to no information about how Marianne was brought up or any details of life and therefore have no idea why she's reacting the way she is to anything. Same goes for the character of Thomas that we control for a brief period. In fact, the character that has the largest amount of backstory is a paedophile art teacher that the game goes to excessive lengths for us to sympathise with. No other character is given the sheer amount of detailed back-story he gets. It's ridiculous. His story touches briefly on the topic of atrocities in the second world war but it doesn't touch on them in a tasteless David Cage way. It's woven deeply into his narrative and regardless of whether you sympathise or not, you can't really say it wasn't done well. My issues is, why wasn't this level of detail given to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lead character? I suppose my main issue is that the game has a great idea at it's core yet manages to be so rote and by the numbers. Outside of the dual worlds mechanic, which is only used in about a third of the game and half of that is cutscenes, there's nothing here that pushes any boundaries. This is a slightly above average game with a short playtime, mundane gameplay, a simple story, forgettable characters and a really good soundtrack. While I agree that it's not a bad game, it's definitely not worth full price. If you like the look of the gameplay trailers (NOT the live action ones, they're garbage) and if you can get it cheaper then I'd recommend you do that. Otherwise, I'd wishlist this and wait for the sales.Show moreShow less
Wow, just wow. I wasn't expecting too much from this game but I gotta admit that it blew me off. The story was amazing, better than a lot of high-budget games from bigger studios. The writing is awesome, love the dialog lines carefully placed and thought that make you feel the emotions of the characters resulting in an immersing experience. It had it time to develop and go through all the steps resulting in a rewarding and surprising end. Another thing that blew me off was the gameplay and the camera techniques, the split-screen mechanic is amazing, I have never seen it, and the camera technique that is fixed based on the scene gives the game a unique personality and I loved it. The graphics and animations are good, wish that the lip sync was better because the characters are so beautifully modeled and a good lip sync is all that is missing. I have to mention the music that is setting up the mood in all of the scenes the themes of the soundtrack are well chosen and gives a nice touch of personality to every scene. As a huge fan of the Silent Hill franchise i got to say that the game really had that creepy vibe of silent hill and i love it for that. For the first big project of Bloober Team it is amazing and i recommend everyone to try it!!Show moreShow less
I had high hopes for this one, so it pains me to say that I was left more than a little disappointed. The Medium could be described as a love letter to classic horror games like Silent Hill. Static camera angles, exploring dreary environments, foraging for clues. If you're like me, this is why you bought the game to begin with. Unfortunately, The Medium seems to be a case of style over substance. The graphics are very ambitious, and a lot of the time it's to a fault. My PC had a very hard time maintaining a decent framerate for about 50% of the game. I get that it's hard to render what is essentially two games running at the same time, but I switched all of the settings to low for testing purposes and still couldn't get a steady framerate in some scenes. Even during the final credits the frames were dropping! That said, the models and environments are gorgeous. The art style of the spirit world is very unique. The voice acting is also excellent and in my opinion, it's what carries the game. For most of the game, your character is alone and their voice is your only companion. In every cutscene or inner monologue, the voice performances really shine. But the gameplay itself? Not engaging. Boring, even. It's a chore getting through levels and triggering a cutscene is a relief because I know I won't have to slow-jog through a long level for a few minutes. Long walks through dreary environments was interesting the first few worlds, but it got rather old. The puzzles are probably the easiest in the genre which isn't terrible, but they do feel somewhat like an afterthought? The story isn't bad. There's a lovely little post-credits message where the dev team thanks you for playing and says they poured their heart and soul into the game, and I don't doubt this for a minute. I do hope to see a sequel some time in the future with perhaps some expanded gameplay this time around. But for now, I wouldn't play this one again any time soon.Show moreShow less
The Medium A happy medium is rare Review Shew! That was a harrowing and depressing journey through grief, severe trauma and abuse. No single soul in this game is spared as it tackles difficult and mature subject matters one would not traditionally reserve for gaming but which only further proves that gaming as its own medium is fast evolving and can now easily stand head to head with its film and literature brethren. The ending, however, did piss me off a bit, because what we are left with here is a narrative cliff-hanger before the screen fades to black. No doubt this was done to leave the door open for a possible sequel, which I can't imagine is not going happen given the game recouped all its marketing and development costs within its first week of sale, but still after the disturbing thrill of the story, I wanted closure and this kind of ending leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. It is remarkable though how Bloober ties all the narrative threads together as there is a lot going on in the beginning of the game which sees our medium, the lovely and charismatic Marianne Rekowicz whom I really hope we see more of in the future, responding to a call from a stranger to come to an abandoned resort long shuttered due to a violent massacre having taken place there a few years prior. From the moment the player arrives at the resort, Blooper keeps things tight and well paced so ones attention is never left waning because one is never left in any one of the given areas you explore long enough to get bored. Marianne has the ability to exist in a "dual reality" which simply means she is able to experience two worlds (the real and the spiritual) simultaneously. When this happens, the screen will split, enabling the player to navigate through both realms at the same time. It's a novel feature that made it the new exclusive to XBOX Series X/S most anticipated title when the new consoles were announced. The game features light puzzling and stealth as its core game mechanics and neither of the two should tax any player which helps keep things moving along at a brisk pace. All of this allows for the story to take the centre stage. Here Bloober cleverly drip feeds the players one horrifying morsel after the next , dishing out about just enough information to keep the player invested thereby ensuring that most should eagerly press on to see the games resolution. All of this is accompanied by some incredible art design (evoking strong memories of Silent Hill) which takes an already relentlessly dark and foreboding story and frames it in broody and menacing environments, each one feeling like its own nightmare waiting to pounce, which is only further amplified by some of the best sound design I have heard for a game yet (make sure you play with a good set of headphones). Having the original composer of Silent Hill 2's soundtrack on board only further evokes the comparison to Silent Hill 2 from 2001. The one real negative I have about the game is it's performance. To put it bluntly it's dismal. I was running it off a GTX 2070 Super at 1080p and even at that resolution and on that card it was struggling. You'll need some fairly hefty hardware to power through this one without hiccups, especially if you want to experience it in 4K. All in all Bloober has seriously impressed me with this one (ending aside). It is not a story for the feint of heart as it tackles some seriously dark subject matter that some may find too sensitive, especially given the real life evil that lives at the heart of this tale, but I can't wait to see what they give us next because I am definitely now a fan. One word or phrase to sum up the experience Harrowing Performance/Bug related incidents Where do we start. Good golly this is one of the buggiest and worst performing games I have played in a a good long while. Constantly crashed on me at the start, with only a verification of the games file integrity finally resolving the issue. The main issue here is the games piss-poor performance. It is not well optimised and even the strongest of cards out there are more than likely going to experience some sort of issue. Make sure you have the hardware to run the game as the requirements are quite steep. Similar to games Layers of Fear, Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil Rating ★★★★★★★★☆☆ https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=869453510Show moreShow less
It's f*cked up (or more precisely "Eto pizdets" in Russian). I only bought it because of Akira, and even who the f*ck knows if these music are really his at all. The game feels as if it was made by scammers, whose plan is to steal money from particularly impressionable people, who will eat any sh*t, as long as it is in the form of a "video game". Also, the creators are very purposefully trying to slow down the playthrough of the player, without offering anything in return for the time spent. But, as always in such fraud schemes, it has beautiful graphics. If it didn't look "hyper realistic", no one would hold back their nerve and would already sh*t on the game 10 times in a row. Apparently in 2020-2021 it is very hard to program puzzles (or to program at all?). If you don't f*cking know how to make games, make interactive movies instead. Please, have some respect and stop f*cking with people's time, brains and wallets.Show moreShow less
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.
