The difference between horror and comedy is largely a matter of timing. For example, when Alex was caught in a storm with his hands tied, trying to dodge sudden flying objects was frightening. A second later, when I realised one of the objects was a frying pan, I determined that my next playthrough would involve a lot of amusing bruises for him.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man Of Medan is the first in a planned series of interactive horror stories from Supermassive Games, the devs best known for 2015's Until Dawn, a game never released on PC and therefore imaginary. Which is unfortunate, because it's the best point of reference for this game. Man Of Medan is essentially a visual novel with extremely high production values, multiple playable characters and possible story paths, and a heavy emphasis on the consequences of player and character decisions.
Supermassive emphasise that the game is geared towards multiplayer, with an online two-player co-op mode, and an up-to-four-friends offline party mode taking full advantage of its multiple perspectives and story permutations - and its many possible deaths. We plan to write about those options later, but as official RPS hermit my report on how it fares here is for a single player run through.
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