The Medium was first revealed back in May. The developers of Observer, Layers of Fear, and Blair Witch, Bloober Team’s next game has players playing as a medium who is haunted by the vision of a child’s murder. Traveling to an abandoned hotel resort to investigate, the medium tries to uncover the mystery of the death of the child. The Medium’s newest trailer released during the Xbox Games Showcase reveals its very unique mechanic: dual-reality gameplay.

Because the main character Marianne is a medium, she has the ability to interact with both the real world and the spirit world. The gameplay trailer revealed today shows that we’ll be doing that at the same time. “Made possible only through the power that cutting-edge next-gen hardware brings, The Medium renders two fully-fledged and visually distinct worlds simultaneously with no loading times,” Lead Game Designer Wojciech Piejko explains. “Players will find themselves playing in either of the worlds, or within both at the same time, with the game purposefully designed in this way to ensure variety and surprise.”

This unique feature provides players with a unique way to play and a whole, new experience, and perspective. Going between the different worlds can lead to solutions to unsolvable puzzles or a way to escape someone or something. Different controller inputs are mapped to each world so exploration and puzzle-solving can be simultaneous when needed. The spirit man also provides Marianne with different skills than she has in the real world such as her Out of Body ability. She can leave her physical self and explore areas only accessible as a spirit.

Talking about how the next-gen hardware has helped craft their vision of The Medium and its unique mechanic, Wojciech said, “this technological concept is one that we’ve been looking into for many years at Bloober Team, but one that in all honesty was impossible before this current gen of hardware. Only with newer tech built into the Xbox Series X and in PCs are we able to fully render two distinct worlds at the same time. This crucially also enables us to switch instantly between locations – which I hope will be a game-changer for the horror genre.”