South of Midnight is a special game, for any number of reasons. Arresting art direction, a strong black female lead, a South American folklore-inspired tale, it also stands amongst the quite suddenly reinvigorated first-party line-up from Microsoft and Xbox. Here it’s the turn of Compulsion Games to weave a fantastical and mesmerizing adventure, joining Avowed and Indiana Jones and The Great Circle at the newfound pinnacle of Xbox gaming.
Our central character is Hazel, a track star who lives with her mama in Prospero, a fictional town in the American South. They’re surrounded by nature, their house sitting on concrete stilts next to a river, but when a downpour causes the river to swell, the house is swept away with Hazel’s mama inside, forcing Hazel to set off on a magical journey of self-discovery.
It turns out that track star Hazel is a Weaver. These mystical female icons have previously served as leaders and protectors, drawing on the powers of weaving to restore the natural order and release spirits back to where they belong. Through South of Midnight’s 12-hour runtime, you’ll unravel various mysteries centred around Hazel’s family, as well as the personal tales of the people living in the area.
Hazel is led through the discovery of her powers via visions of the past, watching Mahalia, the last Weaver of Prospero, lead former slaves out of bondage. Their ghostly forms, a husband, wife and small boy, are being hunted, and their fear is palpable.
It’s one of the best narrative framings for a tutorial I’ve come across, adding tension and emotion, despite it being a reenactment of the past. When other games make these sections frictionless and rote, Compulsion make it clear that storytelling is at the heart of South of Midnight, and that they’ll make use of every possible moment they have with a player.
As Hazel’s skills grow, you learn and understand more about the people of this fictional bayou, and their pain. South of Midnight wants you to empathise, to understand, and to inhabit the culturally and emotionally disparate group of characters, and it does a fantastic job of making every moment feel personal.
South of Midnight is a modern fairytale. There are magical trappings, a journey of self-discovery, and the knowing sting of multiple tails waiting to surprise you. Hazel is strong, opinionated and believable, and you want to take this journey through folklore and history with her.
That’s helped by South of Midnight’s striking visual style, mixing stop-motion techniques with traditional digital animation. It looks phenomenal, and my only wish is that they leaned even harder into the off-kilter hand-made look. At times, it feels too smooth during the moment-to-moment gameplay, but I imagine they settled on this for easier locomotion, and probably not giving players too much to deal with visually.
The creature design, in particular, is stunning, giving life and character to some truly incredible monsters. Early on, you’ll love meeting the Creole Catfish, his low frame rate animation and Southern drawl setting the tone for the rest of your journey. It’s not all about the scene-stealing giant creations though, and the little stop-motion turtles, foxes and possums that populate the world also help to make it feel as though you’re playing through an animated movie.
South of Midnight isn’t shy about flinging powers and abilities at you, and your toolkit of ways to deal with knotted strands, giant briars and malevolent creatures soon fills up. Mechanically, South of Midnight isn’t quite as ground-breaking as its visuals and storytelling might have you expect, but this is a solid and enjoyable third-person adventure, with Hazel leaping, gliding and fighting her way through a series of visually arresting areas.
If anything, the combat here reminds me of Hellblade, in that there’s a limited number of enemies, and they often just serve as gates to the next area you’re going to explore. Still, I found it enjoyable perfectly timing dodges and flinging enemies around the small combat arenas, but it’s solid, rather than spectacular. There’s more than enough challenge to it to keep you on the edge of your seat, and it limits the unfair moments where you might feel that you were beaten by the camera rather than your skill set.
Elsewhere, Hazel borrows from Lara Croft’s toolkit, ably climbing across painted sections of wood, or a handily aligned row of fungi growing from a tree. She can glide like Link, or wall run like the Prince of Persia, but there are few moments where your interaction with Hazel feels wholly new.
You’re here for the lore, the visuals and the storytelling. The audio is also fantastic, with energetic, emotional voice acting – all delivered with some wonderfully authentic-sounding Southern accents – and music that lilts between dark, unsettling tones before turning to hopeful acoustic moments and surprising vocal interludes. I loved it, and you should absolutely check out Olivier Deriviere’s full soundtrack as soon as you can, though it might give a few things away narratively.