Southern Gothic is an odd thing, a topic that I don’t blame people for not immediately understanding or recognizing. As a Southerner myself, it’s a genre that fascinates me and has made me all the more interested in South of Midnight, a narrative adventure from Compulsion Games and Xbox Game Studios that combines elements of eerie folklore into something of a modern fairytale.
It's not a combination anyone would expect, with a Canadian studio going out of its way to tell a story in the Deep South. At a recent preview event, I had the chance to go hands-on with South of Midnight, playing one of the game’s early chapters and talking with the team that’s putting this truly unique adventure together.
Crafting a rich Southern world
So why is a Canadian studio interested in telling a Southern story? According to art director Whitney Clayton, several members of the team had roots in Southern parts of America, with some of them having previously lived there or having family in the South. Clayton says that early in the game's production, several team members at Compulsion Games took research trips into Southern states, exploring and gathering as much detail as they could.
"There was so much there from a cultural standpoint. From a visual standpoint, it’s so rich, it’s so beautiful," Clayton says, adding that something that really stood out to her was how overgrowth consumed everything. "We would talk about it, but until you go there and see the kudzu, you don’t realize how insane it is."
Compulsion Games also visited a local stop-motion company called Clyde-Henry Productions, examining the figurines and studying their range of motion in order to understand how to translate that style into elements of the game. Everything in South of Midnight is designed to look hand-crafted.
Toward the end of the game's development, the studio then came back to Clyde-Henry and brought the company on to create a full stop-motion video that could serve as an intro to South of Midnight. Clyde-Henry had to study the game's assets in order to craft the right figurines, creating something of a developmental ouroboros that brought South of Midnight full circle.
Exploring the eerie and the familiar
My time in South of Midnight began in the game's third chapter, at which point protagonist Hazel is looking for her mother, who has been swept away by a flood. Hazel is seeing visions of someone in the past and clearly has some kind of magical abilities, but she doesn't understand them quite yet. She finds the strange Catfish, a talking...well, Catfish, who identifies her as a Weaver and promises to help if she's willing to free him from the clutches of a massive tree.
Hazel feels solid to control, quickly unlocking abilities like a double jump and glide that allow her to zip around the flooded town and accompanying bayou with ease. The platforming here feels fairly basic, though I'm told things will really ramp up as the game progresses. There are secrets around every corner, including additional upgrade materials Hazel affectionately calls Floofs. Game director Jasmin Roy notes that each upgrade in Hazel's skill tree is meant to feel like a meaningful choice but that attentive players who carefully explore will be able to max the skill tree out toward the end of the game.
Getting into combat is where South of Midnight shows its teeth, with some surprisingly tough encounters as Hazel is dispatching ghoulish "Haints" that are corrupting the environment. Last-second dodges and careful use of magic is key in order to control a fight before literally unraveling the Haints, though there are a number of accessibility options and difficulty tweaks if you find the experience too challenging at first. Most of Hazel's magic is themed around weaving and threads, something Clayton says was born out of a desire to "take back" the historically feminine association with weaving and "turn it into something powerful."
Dark words and ill deeds
Playing on an Xbox Series X, the sights and sounds in South of Midnight feel spot-on, with strangely disturbed crumbling buildings being consumed by the swamps — Clayton drew on "houses floating in the water in South Carolina" for a strong visual motif. Exploration outside of combat is always accompanied by constant noise, with frogs and bugs droning constantly in the background.
Animals are all around, something Clayton says aids the storybook aspects of the game, as the animals are "judging" Hazel, aware that she has a greater part to play in the tale that's unfolding. Hazel can even explore animal burrows with Crouton, an adorable magical doll that can be puppeteered in order to fit through narrow passageways too small for humans.
At the core of this adventure, though, is the narrative, and that's where South of Midnight revels in its more sinister inspirations. Clayton cites films like The Night of the Hunter in establishing the tone that the studio wanted to take, delving into a plot filled with tortured personalities that are "larger than life" and "packed with personality."
As Hazel works to free the jovial Catfish, she starts uncovering evidence of some uncomfortable deeds that took place years prior in the swamp, actions that rippled out to cause untold amounts of pain. I don't want to spoil the outcome, but even this early on, South of Midnight treads into some dark territory that would befit a tragedy or cruel twist in Boris Karloff's Thriller.
A murky story to be told
Growing up in South Carolina, you hear a lot about ghosts. I remember listening to stories of the Gray Man as a kid, wondering and hoping that I might see a glimpse for myself on trips to Pawleys Island. Then there are the less auspicious ghosts, the ones lingering in the decay and overgrowth of cemeteries or forgotten mansions. They may not have names, and the adults you ask may turn away when you try to bring it up, but they’re there all the same.
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From the stop-motion-inspired animation to the droning sounds of the swamp, South of Midnight is one of the most stylish games I've gotten my hands on in a long time, and it speaks to me on a personal level I'd never imagined possible. While I still have some questions, I’m all the more eager to play the full game now. If the rest of the experience keeps the same sense of escalation and creeping macabre mixed with humor, then South of Midnight could be one of this year’s best games. April can’t get here soon enough.
South of Midnight is slated to launch on April 8, 2025 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Windows PC. Like all Xbox first-party games, it’s included day one in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC. Preordering the Premium Edition grants early access starting on April 3.
