The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan is a survival horror video game played from a third-person perspective in which single players or multiplayers assume control of five different characters that become trapped on board of a ghost ship. Players are required to make decisions based on their character's "head" or their "heart", or can choose for them to do nothing, whilst selecting between different options when interacting with other characters. The selection of options are stylised as a compass, which is both representative of the characters' "moral compass" and reflective of the game's nautical themes. The narrative changes and adapts to the choices that the players make, thus making it possible for players to keep all playable characters alive or to have some (or all) of them die. Choices also affect the characters' personality traits (which affects subsequent cutscenes and dialogue options), as well as their relationships with each other. The game can be played multiple times, as there are multiple endings and multiple scenarios based on the decisions that the players make. Action sequences mainly feature quick time events, most of which, if missed, can lead to dire consequences for the characters. As players explore the ghost ship, they can find different "Dark Pictures" that gives them premonitions of what may happen in the future. Players can also uncover the mystery surrounding the tragedy that occurred on the ship in the past, which can help save their character's lives in the present.
Inspired by the popularity of their 2015 game Until Dawn's streaming, and the number of people playing the game with their friends by sharing the controls, Supermassive Games introduced two different multiplayer modes in The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan titled "Shared Story" and "Movie Night". "Shared Story" allows two players to play co-operatively online. "Movie Night" allows up to five multiplayers to select their own characters and prompts them to pass the controller at each turn.
Development
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan was developed by Supermassive Games. After favourable reception of their 2015 title Until Dawn, the team realized that there was a market for interactive drama horror games, and wanted to expand the concept to a larger audience. Thus, The Dark Pictures Anthology series was created, with Man of Medan being the first of eight planned installments in the series. Supermassive Games stated that they plan on releasing the subsequent seven games every six months in the anthology, with each game based on a horror trope that will feature a unique story that has no correlation to the other entries in the series.
Man of Medan was inspired by the urban legend of the SS Ourang Medan, which is about a ghost ship that had allegedly become a shipwreck in Dutch East Indies waters in the late 1940s. Its entire crew was found deceased under suspicious and mysterious circumstances, with their faces twisted into horrified expressions, which seemed to indicate that they were terrified and had suffered before passing, despite having no visible signs of injury to their bodies and the ship being seemingly unscathed. An effort was made to bring the SS Ourang Medan back to port, but before it could be transported, the ship exploded and sunk underwater. Theories of how the ill-fated crew perished vary, ranging from the rational to the paranormal, while there is speculation as to whether the ship even existed at all. The word Ourang is Malay or Indonesian for "man" or "person", while Medan is the largest city on the Indonesian island of Sumatra; giving an approximate translation of "Man from Medan".
Supermassive and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment officially announced the title on 21 August 2018. The game's cast includes Shawn Ashmore as one of the playable characters and Pip Torrens as the Curator, an omniscient individual who observes the events of the game and communicates directly with the player. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 30 August 2019.
Reception
Critical response
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan received "generally favorable reviews" for the Windows version, while the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions were met with "mixed or average reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic.
Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation ranked the game as the Fifth Blandest Game of 2019.
Sales
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan was the third best-selling game in the United Kingdom in its week of release, behind Astral Chain and Wreckfest. During its first week on sale, 81% of the game's retail copies were sold on PlayStation 4, versus 19% on Xbox One. However, Man of Medan didn't reach the same level of physical sales in comparison to Supermassive's 2015 title Until Dawn, selling 61% fewer physical copies at launch than the PlayStation 4 exclusive.
