A forest path in Medium Rare looks familiar until a masked face appears in the middle of it. The scene's uneasy mix of photographic texture and chunky pixels comes from several creative processes working together, developer Payne Robinson explained in a November 2 interview with 80 Level.
The upcoming turn-based survival dungeon crawler takes place in a world where cannibalism has been industrialized. For Re:Drawn's audience, the striking detail is how its images are assembled and then made to feel like they belong together.
Photographs, paint and a shared palette
Robinson told 80 Level that artist Giovanni Fim combines stock photographs in Photoshop to create enemies and event illustrations. Fim paints over the compositions to reconcile details such as lighting, then the team reduces the resolution and indexes the colours. He can return to the image, adjust highlights and repeat the process until the result works.
Different areas, including the forest, village and factory, have their own palettes, Robinson said. The palette does more than give each location a colour identity: it also helps photographs and painted additions sit together as a single image. That visual cohesion is an editorial reading of the process he describes.
Official Medium Rare demo trailer, shared in ExeCo's announcement.
Project: Medium Rare
Production: ExeCo
Medium Rare images belong to ExeCo and their respective creators and rights holders. Separate editorial reuse permission unconfirmed.
The team originally considered a fully hand-drawn approach. Robinson said the collage direction emerged in part from the practical demands of animating sketches, while still giving the small team a distinctive visual language.
Making room for the world
The game's backgrounds use another technique: Robinson said they begin with stock video, processed into lower-resolution frames and indexed colours. Enemies and event illustrations follow Fim's collage workflow, while player animations draw on modified 3D assets. The shared treatment helps bring these different sources into the same visual world.
An official combat image places pixelated figures on a clear three-by-three grid.
Project: Medium Rare
Production: ExeCo
Medium Rare images belong to ExeCo and their respective creators and rights holders. Separate editorial reuse permission unconfirmed.
Readability remains a challenge. Robinson said the team simplified interface elements so the vivid imagery would not have to compete with unnecessary information; a small combat grid also helps communicate position.
ExeCo announced a free Steam demo in October and lists the full game for January 2027. Steam credits Robinson, Peter Tinaglia and Fim as developers. The release window is planned and may change.
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