Get The Medium 1.1.22 for Mac

You need an Apple silicon Mac to step into this one — an M1, M2, or M3 running macOS 12.0 Monterey or newer. On a 2020 M1 MacBook Air under Sequoia, the native ARM build feels right at home, no Rosetta required.

Dual-reality horror at a Soviet-era resort

• A third-person psychological horror story set in late-90s Poland, at an abandoned communist resort called Niwa.
• Dual-reality gameplay: you see the physical world and the spirit world simultaneously, split across the screen, and actions in one affect the other.
• A soundtrack co-composed by Arkadiusz Reikowski and Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill) that threads dread through every corridor.
• The Maw — a persistent, whispering antagonist voiced by Troy Baker that stalks you through both realities.
• Interface support for Russian, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, French, and Japanese.

The dual-reality hook

The split-screen mechanic isn't a gimmick here; it's the core of every puzzle and chase. Marianne, a medium haunted by visions, can exist in both planes at once. A locked door in the real world might be blocked by a spirit-world barrier you have to out-of-body your way past. It creates a quiet, slow-burn tension that leans more on atmosphere than jump scares. If you've worn out your copy of Silent Hill 2 and want something that feels like a cousin rather than a clone, this native Mac port delivers.

Picture a weekend evening with headphones on and the lights low. Someone who replayed Silent Hill during the pandemic and has been chasing that same heavy atmosphere ever since loads up the Niwa resort for the first time. They spend the opening hour walking empty hallways, reading scattered notes, and slowly realising the split screen isn't a party trick — it's how Marianne experiences the world all the time. That player isn't here for twitch reflexes. They're here to let the dread build, and the Apple silicon native build lets them do it without fan noise pulling them out of the moment.

Bumps along the hallway

A few rough edges pop up, and most have straightforward fixes.

• Stuttering during dual-reality transitions. On a base M1 with 8 GB of RAM, the split-screen render can hitch when both views are dense with particle effects. Dropping texture quality to Medium and turning off motion blur smooths it out without gutting the look.
• Camera sensitivity feels off. The default controller and mouse curves are tuned for consoles. Knock the X-axis sensitivity down a couple of notches and the aiming, especially during stealth sections with the Maw, gets far more predictable.
• Black screen on first launch. If you drag the app from the disk image straight to the Dock instead of the Applications folder, the executable sometimes can't find its resources. A proper copy to Applications fixes it every time.
• Stuck in geometry. Marianne can wedge herself behind furniture in tight rooms. The checkpoint system is generous, so a quick reload rarely costs more than a minute of progress.

If you keep hitting performance walls, the native ARM build means you're already getting what the hardware can give — there's no translation layer to blame. The game just asks a lot during split-screen moments.

Alongside other Mac horror titles

Stacked against Resident Evil Village on Mac, The Medium trades Capcom's action-horror momentum for pure psychological weight. Village wants you to manage ammunition and sprint; here you're holding your breath while a spirit whispers just off-screen. Both run native on Apple silicon, but they're answering different cravings.

Compared to Layers of Fear (also from Bloober Team), The Medium has more mechanical bite. Layers is a walking simulator through a painter's crumbling mind — gorgeous, but passive. The dual-reality puzzles here give your hands something to do beyond pushing the stick forward. It's a middle ground between observation and interaction.

Next to Amnesia: The Bunker, the tension engine works differently. Amnesia gives you a single monster and a sandbox of tools; The Medium gives you a fixed story and a split perspective gimmick that rewires how you read every room. If Amnesia feels like improvising your way out of a nightmare, The Medium feels like being guided through one by someone who already knows the ending. Folks who want to download the medium for mac usually know which camp they fall into before they even see the title screen.

• macOS 12.0 Monterey or later
• Mac with Apple M1 chip or later (Apple Silicon)