Medium Rare is a Resident Evil inspired dungeon crawler about rescuing your wife from a human meat factory, and according to a report by Rock Paper Shotgun, it draws on an unusual source for its visuals: stock photos.
The game is set in a world where global resources have run out and “cannibalism has been industrialised.” It follows the usual grid-based dungeon exploring format of the genre, with a twist on combat. Enemies are placed along a three by three grid, with their distance affecting how much damage you do. Combat also relies on dice rolls, and your choice of weapon is critical in determining whether you survive.
The Resident Evil influences appear in tile-based inventory management, infected enemies hunting you down, and rare resting spaces that serve as points of respite.
But it is the look that sets Medium Rare apart. The game uses real photographs run through Photoshop, dithered to create crunchy, sickly assets that flirt with pixel art. In a dev vlog covering the early stages of putting an asset together, these photos were revealed to all be stock photos.
The process is essentially photobashing — a “somewhat forgotten and underappreciated artform” that has been further damaged by the introduction of genAI.
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.
Giovanni Fim, artist
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 throw it a wishlist ahead of its release in 2027.
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