I’ve spoken here before how the ultimate way to rope me into checking your game out is by having a nebulously designed Strong Vibe, a look that immediately sets it apart before I even know what any mechanics might be, and Medium Rare, a Resident Evil inspired dungeon crawler RPG about rescuing your wife from a human meat factory, has a deliciously nasty vibe. And its crunchy look has some inspired origins: stock photos.
First, a bit more about the game. As mentioned, you are out to rescue your wife from a human meat factory, because this is a world where global resources have run out and “cannibalism has been industrialised.” It’s the usual grid-based map, dungeon exploring affair you’d find in the genre, with a nice twist on combat; enemies are placed along a three by three grid, with how far away they are affecting how much damage you do. Combat is based on dice rolls too, and your choice of weapon is critical in determining how likely it is you’ll survive. You can see the Resi influences in the likes of tile-based inventory management, infected enemies hunting you down, and rare resting spaces as points of respite.
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It all looks mechanically satisfying, but as mentioned it’s the look that drew me in, which uses real photographs run through Photoshop, dithered to all hell to make crunchy, sickly assets that flirt with pixel art. And as shared in a neat little dev vlog, these photos are all stock photos. You can check the process out in the video above, covering the early stages of putting an asset together. It’s all essentially photobashing, a somewhat forgotten and underappreciated artform that’s been further ruined by the introduction of genAI.
I appreciate artist Giovanni Fim’s comments on going through such a process in the above video too: “You need to iterate and find cool things that people are not doing very often on Steam. That way you can be on top of the slop, be on top of the cliche things, and being extreme really works. You need to zone in and focus into a very specific thing, something that defines your game.” Fim is right! I’m here writing about Medium Rare because it caught my attention with a look you don’t see very often. Definitely a lesson to be found here for prospective indie devs.
Medium Rare has a demo you can check out on Steam, or you can just through it a wishlist ahead of its release in 2027.