The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan: Making a paranormally great Switch port

In 2019, our longtime partners at Supermassive Games released Man of Medan the first title in The Dark Pictures Anthology – an exciting collection of stand-alone, branching cinematic horror games. First appearing on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, Man of Medan included an extra game mode, ‘The Curator’s Cut,’ and then later on an extended playable chapter, ‘Flooded,’ that launched with enhanced next-gen versions on PS5 and Xbox Series systems in 2022.

That, however, left one mainstream machine missing for an absolute wealth of content: the Nintendo Switch.

Seeking some extra expertise to help them port the game to the less powerful console, Supermassive turned to Room 8 Group—trusting a partnership that had just recently resulted in the much-loved multiplayer mode in the studio’s latest smash-hit, The Quarry.

Like the characters in many a scare-filled Supermassive game, our specialists jumped… at the chance to help.

The challenge

How do you bring the immersive, high-fidelity spooky cinematic horror and multiple modes from much more powerful platforms to a hybrid home/handheld console with considerably less horsepower?

That was our biggest challenge on a project that started with six engineers, but eventually expanded to 12 experts—including technical artists, developers, and even QA specialists.

What we did

Our first port of call was to confirm the project was possible—performing a thorough technical feasibility assessment to ensure we could create a version of the game that met Supermassive’s quality requirements.

Deciding it was definitely doable, we set to work by tackling a number of challenges—all the while working closely with Supermassive Games’ team; exchanging insights and sharing learnings as they produced patches for the title’s other versions.

Our successes included:

• Establishing optimal memory usage

This involved thoroughly testing two methods for improving the render pipeline:

1. Deferred rendering, which separates scene geometry rendering and lighting calculations—calculating lighting for only the pixels visible on-screen, but saving the G-buffer, which can consume more memory.
2. Forward rendering, which performs lighting calculations per pixel or per vertex, rendering each object then applying their lighting calculations individually. This approach can save memory as it doesn’t store information in the buffer, yet making individual calculations can in some cases slow down performance as a whole.

After extensive testing, we discovered forward rendering was 15-20% more efficient—reducing the pressure on Switch’s hardware while maintaining a steady frame rate and improving overall performance. With that in mind, we added forward rendering support to Supermassive Games’ customized version of Unreal, making the porting process considerably easier.

• Achieving a cinematic frame rate

With development time a constant pressure, an abundance of unique assets to optimize (more on that coming up) and the Switch’s hardware constraints to consider, we needed to find a middle ground on frame rate.

We soon settled on 24 fps—matching the frame rate used in movies to give the game a cinematic feel while avoiding a sharp end look. It suited the game’s nature as a slow, gradual, tension-based cinematic horror, with one or two occasional instances of slowdown that didn’t noticeably impact gameplay a very small price to pay for a top-quality port to far less powerful hardware.

• Maximizing the graphical fidelity of character models

Story-heavy games rely on their ability to immerse players in the characters’ experiences, so the level of detail (LoDs) in character models is all-important. The Man of Medan Switch port threw up one interesting challenge here, with Unreal Engine bugs stopping us generating suitable LoDs for distant objects with fewer vertices. Leaning on our specialist’s expertise we were able to find a solve, ensuring character models delivered the highest fidelity possible, and the richest experience for Switch fans.

• Optimizing in-game assets

Man of Medan has multiple branching levels and a wide variety of unique assets, across numerous levels such as Chinese Market, Abandoned Ship, Storm, and more. For example, each room and cargo hold has its own intricacies, making optimization a real headache. Luckily, our talented technical artists worked tirelessly to recreate these assets and find creative solutions along the way.

• Optimizing the particle system

One element unique to Man of Medan is a hallucination-inducing substance called Manchurian Gold—a yellow-green mist that appears in every level. Depicting this on Switch meant reworking the particle system to create effects like sparks, steam, volumetric water splashes, smoke, and more. With some experimentation, we were able to maintain the needed visual quality while actually reducing the strain on the hardware to enable the game to perform smoothly.

• Optimizing animations and level design

Animations and level design were another area where we were able to make significant performance gains. By implementing a system that performed simple calculations to avoid displaying things that were not visible to the player—like hiding certain elements from view by positioning them strategically off-screen—we were able to ensure a smooth experience on Switch hardware.

• Other performance boosts

Additional performance-boosting work we did to get the Switch version up to speed included:

1. Minimizing the number of shadows and light sources without sacrificing an appropriately menacing atmosphere.
2. Improving the performance of complex materials without sacrificing the overall gameplay experience.
3. Reworking certain areas: For example, altered the yacht and simulations, reducing polygon counts and combining them into a single mesh.

• Porting the multiplayer functionality

While porting the game’s epic singleplayer story was challenging enough, moving the multiplayer mode over to Switch presented even more problems for our specialists to solve.

Specifically, adding multiplayer to an already nonlinear story significantly increased the number of potential plot variations—leading to a higher probability of encountering bugs or inconsistencies.

To overcome these challenges, we dedicated extra time and resources to thoroughly test and debug the multiplayer features. By ironing out the bugs and ensuring a stable experience, we made it possible for players to gather their friends, share the scares, make choices, and have one hell of a time navigating the twisted story together.

Specialisms delivered

1. Bug fixing
2. Core engine optimizations
3. Developed and optimized materials, shaders, and visual effects
4. Ensured seamless visual asset integration and performance.
5. Implemented and optimized rendering features
6. Improved visual workflows via scripting
7. Memory management improvements
8. Optimized environmental assets
9. Profiled GPU performance
10. System performance enhancements

Need an expert port for your latest smash-hit?

Despite the many challenges we faced during the porting process, our team were successful in bringing the game to Switch. By applying intelligent optimizations, creative problem-solving and mindful reworking techniques, we delivered an experience that felt true to the original release on far less powerful hardware—allowing players to enjoy thrilling narrative and engaging gameplay, even on the go.

If you need an expert partner who plug into your team, hit the ground running and bring your latest release to new hardware in tight timelines, let’s talk.