South of Midnight review: I adore this world, and I hope others explore the dark folktale from Xbox

Pain and rot, beauty and love, fear and anger, hatred and hope. All of that and more is the foundation of the Deep South in the U.S., filled with loving people, cherished tradition, and ugly history mixed together.

That is the world developer Compulsion Games chose to explore with its latest title, South of Midnight, a game exploring the folklore of the South, with tales of strange creatures and haunted places, alongside odd characters hiding ever more secrets.

It's a game that could've felt empty or misaimed at multiple points, but instead resonates clearly, spinning a modern fairy tale that doesn't shy away from pain but instead dares to ask how it might be helped and relieved.

I've had a lot of fun exploring South of Midnight, and with the credits rolling just after 12 hours, it's a story I recommend others embark on.

Why You Should Trust Me

Why You Should Trust Me

Samuel Tolbert

Over the years as I've reviewed numerous titles, I've consistently stood by the idea that smaller games can be fantastic, and a third-person adventure doesn't need to be an RPG that runs for dozens of hours. I've also lived my whole life in the Deep South, meaning I'm intimately familiar with much of the local folklore, stories, flora and fauna.

What is South of Midnight?

• South of Midnight is a third-person action-adventure game.
• It's developed by Compulsion Games and published by Xbox Game Studios.
• The game is available on Xbox Series X|S and PC, as well as Xbox Game Pass.

South of Midnight is developed by Compulsion Games, the Montreal-based studio that previously worked on Contrast and We Happy Few.

This is the team's first game developed fully as a part of Xbox Game Studios, with the studio being acquired by Microsoft back in 2018.

South of Midnight is a third-person action-adventure game, with players in the role of protagonist Hazel Flood, who loses her mother in a sudden flash flood. It's heavily based around Southern Gothic, a strange genre that's set in the decay, beauty, and horror of the American Deep South all at once, from the swamps of Louisiana and South Carolina to the mountain foothills of Tennessee and North Carolina.

Learning that she has a connection to a strange power called Weaving, Hazel embarks on a journey to find her mother, encountering creatures from Southern folklore along the way, such as the dreaded Two-Toed Tom and the strange Huggin' Molly.

South of Midnight will take around 10 to 12 hours to finish for a player pushing through the story, depending on exactly how long players take to scour their surroundings in search of collectibles.

The game is available for $40, and as an Xbox first-party game, it's also included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

South of Midnight

Hazel's journey in South of Midnight weaves a tale of empathy and healing, with strange creatures to meet and old wounds to confront. It's a journey worth taking for anyone enjoys more folklore-inspired stories.

👉See at: Amazon | Best Buy | CDKeys (Steam) | CDKeys (Xbox)

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South of Midnight review: Story and characters

• South of Midnight is a story-driven game, with a heavy emphasis on characters.
• Hazel is the main protagonist, though she's also accompanied by Catfish.
• Numerous eclectic characters like Bunny and Roux round out the story.

Hazel is the protagonist of South of Midnight, and as performed by Adriyan Rae (with motion capture assistance from Nona Parker Johnson), she's extremely likable. She's smart, a bit skeptical, but incredibly kind.

That kindness is the core of the story and her role as a new Weaver, as Hazel untangles the knots that surround the lives of everyone around her. She doesn't always get things right, but she's driven by compassion even as she desperately attempts to find her mom.

Hazel is aided by Catfish, a wisecracking catfish that helps her adjust to the fact that all the old stories are real, though there's often more to situations than meets the eye. Their dynamic drives much of the game, and it's fun to watch unfold in a way that feels real, such as when Catfish teases Hazel for changing her clothes by asking if she got a promotion working at Piggly-Wiggly.

Other strange characters add to the world, such as Hazel's estranged grandmother, Bunny, an influential businesswoman. There's also Roux, a New Orleans huckster as polite as he is sly.

These personalities feel plucked straight out of fairy tales, with a dash of Boris Karloff's Thriller for good measure. Genre familiarity means you can see some of the twists coming a mile away, but that doesn't feel wrong, as fate unfolds true to the stories that have served as a bedrock for Southern Gothic as a genre.

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South of Midnight review: Gameplay and features

• South of Midnight's combat involves fighting and unraveling Haints.
• There's also a few boss fights against uniquely dangerous creatures.
• Hazel has fun combat abilities, but the limited enemy variety does show.

Gameplay in South of Midnight revolves around exploring the environment and clearing out Haints, creatures born of pain and trauma. To take on these Haints, Hazel has a variety of powers, being able to dodge and weave (literally), pushing and pulling the creatures before unraveling them.

Unraveling restores a bit of Hazel's health, but it also reduces the cooldown time on her powers, and before long, I found myself in a nice rhythm, unraveling creatures with ease.

It's helped by the fact that Hazel feels great to control, zipping around with speed and flashiness once you unlock a few different upgrades. She glides, grapples, dashes, and wall-runs, usually in free form but occasionally when fleeing from danger in escape sequences.

The enemy variety does grow a bit over time, with the game introducing a handful of stronger Haint variants as time goes on, but by around the two-thirds mark or so, you've seen everything it has to offer. It's not an awful range, but it does feel a fair bit repetitive, especially by the end, where you'll be fighting dozens upon dozens of enemies with little respite.

In order to grab the aforementioned upgrades, Hazel has to find Floofs, bits of cotton-like magical substance hidden everywhere. Under sheet metal, in rock piles, and even in animal burrows.

For the latter, Hazel has access to Crouton, a stuffed doll that comes to life, which can squeeze into places she doesn't fit, clearing a pathway or finding more Floofs.

In combat, Crouton helpfully possesses enemies, turning Haints against each other and providing some breathing room in particularly crowded fights.

While I won't provide spoilers, the biggest challenges in the game come via the boss fights against massive creatures, which usually involve some unique mechanics not seen elsewhere. These fights are setpieces, and usually provided the most challenge, with one in particular accounting for the majority of my deaths in the game.

Outside of combat, Hazel's powers can also be used for solving puzzles, though these are usually fairly simple, and only a handful gave me more than a few seconds' pause. Collectibles take the form of Floofs, readables like letters and newspapers that shed light on the story, and rare health filaments, the latter of which is used to increase Hazel's maximum health.

South of Midnight review: Visuals and audio

• South of Midnight features heavily stylized graphics that look wonderful.
• The soundtrack plays a key part in the game, telling a story of hurt and hope.
• On Xbox Series X, it runs at 4K 60 FPS, with very few performance drops.

Since its initial reveal, the style and look of South of Midnight have caught my eye, with the characters and creatures rendered in a stop motion aesthetic quite unlike the overwhelming majority of games available.

Combined with the strong art direction, it's beautiful to watch in motion, with Roux in particular being one of my favorite character designs I've seen a long while.

Despite the game's concise design, there's a great deal of variety, with eerie alligator-filled swamps and jutting crow-haunted mountains featured alike.

There's also some truly excellent poster work, with faded calls for unionization or slightly saucy advertisements that tell so much of the story of the town of Prospero and its surrounding environs.

Sound design plays a similarly important role in South of Midnight, with the sounds of creatures constantly all around you. Squealing pigs and cooing mourning doves join myriad insect life, and throughout the entire time I played, it always seemed that I could identify something making noise in the background.

This realistic presence is then layered with the supernatural, as strange voices call out ever-so-softly to Hazel whenever she uses her Weaving powers. It's a small touch, but one that's constantly there in my mind as I played.

The soundtrack is composed by Olivier Deriviere, also known for his work on the Plague Tale games. Most of the tracks are centered around a particular event or creature, recounting the history of woe that led to a particular moment.

These tracks build up through a chapter, first present as a whisper in Hazel's ear, introducing a few strums or a sudden lyric here and there before bursting into song during the confrontations. It became something I looked forward to in each chapter, as Deriviere's work captures multiple typical styles of Southern music tracks without much in the way of repetition.

South of Midnight review: Accessibility and approachability

• South of Midnight has numerous accessibility options.
• Players can adjust difficulty, fonts, hints, and much more.
• The setting will resonate for Southerners, but is explained for anyone unfamiliar.

South of Midnight features a wide array of accessibility options, letting players add a persistent dot, adjust font sizes, and more. If you suffer from wrist pain, you may want to alter holding down a button or adjust the camera sensitivity.

There are also some settings for audio cues, providing additional hints for locating collectibles that might be hard to see in the environment. For players who truly only care about the story, there's even an option to skip ahead a checkpoint if a particular fight or escape sequence is giving you too much trouble.

Given the deep dive this game holds into aspects of Southern life, there are certainly elements that may not hit the same for someone who didn't grow up or visit these states. Even so, the game does a fairly good job explaining its subject matter, especially the creatures that are usually center stage for several chapters.

South of Midnight review: My final thoughts

✅ You should buy this if ...

• You like third-person adventure games that are 10 to 12 hours long.

South of Midnight doesn't overstay its welcome, and pushing through the story will only take players about 10 hours. That number increases slightly if you're driven to find the various collectibles, but even so, you're only looking at around 12 hours of playtime at max.

• You're a fan of creepy stories, folkore, and the Deep South as a setting.

Southern Gothic, while an established genre, isn't a common setting for games. South of Midnight is one of the strongest ever takes on the setting, with creepy folklore and brushes with uncomfortable topics. Almost everyone is hiding secrets, good and ill, and that mystery is compelling for anyone who appreciates what a complicated mess the south can be.

❌ You should not buy this if ...

• You don't like third-person, story-focused games.

While South of Midnight's combat opens up over time, at the end of the day, this is a story-driven game. If, for whatever reason, that doesn't appeal to you — maybe you want a longer game, or you don't care to follow stories in general — then a lot of the attractive qualities disappear.

So much in South of Midnight is suited for my sensibilities, in unique ways that I know won't be the same for everyone. From the calls of various birds to the hanging moss, every detail of Southern life has been captured and enhanced, with a mystical quality lying over it all.

The South has a lot of hurt. Atrocities, violations, and pain. It still has a soul, something beautiful that I see every day. The immaculate art and audio work in this game reflect and contribute to that soul, something that shines in the character designs and stellar soundtrack.

At its core is a story with heart, a modern fairy tale with dark twists and sinister characters that speaks to human pain, the continuing wounds of trauma, and of accepting the mistakes you've made.

The combat is fun enough, though the formula crosses over from "well-established" to "begins to drag" by the time the credits roll. While I do think more enemy variety would've been nice, the game doesn't linger so long that it becomes a major problem.

I've enjoyed this yarn of a young Weaver aspiring to save her mother, and I truly hope we get to see more of Hazel in the future. South of Midnight is a love letter to Southern Gothic and the South, and it's one I hope people can come away from filled with more meaning.

South of Midnight launches on April 8, 2025, on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC (via Steam and the Xbox PC app). As an Xbox first-party game, it's included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Early access is available for Premium Edition buyers starting on April 3.

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