The Medium is more Polish than most Polish-made games

Poland is a well-represented country when it comes to game development. From CD Projekt Red's bombastically ambitious RPGs to Techland's Dying Light, to wonderful indie games like Frostpunk, Book of Demons, and Farm 51's horror games like Get Even and Painkiller: Hell & Damnation, the Polish dev scene isn't lacking. But amid all these Polish-made games, few have actually depicted Poland itself. The Medium breaks this unfortunate tradition beautifully, using the apartment at the start of the game to take a surprisingly close look at the country in which it was made.

In fact, right from the opening cutscene, which floats through Krakow's Plac Matejki before zooming into Jack's apartment, it's clear that developer Bloober Team desperately wants to use worldbuilding to introduce us to a culture that's been behind so many games yet rarely depicted itself.

Jack's apartment is in a beautiful but poorly maintained building, built around the turn of the 20th century. Look out the window, and through the fog you'll see the nebulous outlines of a monument harking back to arguably Poland's most illustrious time in history: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's victory over the Teutonic Order at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.

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