Today’s video game market is so diversified and backloaded with classic games that it can be difficult for new titles to find a unique niche that hooks players. South of Midnight aims to differentiate itself with captivating stop motion animation and an approachable price point of $39.99. ‘Handcrafted, hallucinatory adventures’ is how Compulsion Games describes their games, and that looks to be especially true of their latest surrealist adventure set in the deep south. Here are 15 things you need to know before you buy South of Midnight.
Stop-Motion Animation Toggle
South of Midnight immediately looks different from any other game just by the charming stop-motion animation alone. Of course, not everyone wants to play an high paced action game within this intentionally choppy styling. Compulsion has confirmed that the stop-motion effect can be turned off during gameplay only. This means that cinematics and story sequences have stop-motion baked in with no option to turn off, but at least it can be toggled off during combat and traversal.
Game Length
Compulsion has also confirmed roughly how long it takes to complete South of Midnight; a lean 12 hours or so. The game takes place within the span of a single day and has a total of 14 chapters to its story. What’s really cool is seeing the lighting change as morning gives way to mid-day and evening shifts to nighttime. As Compulsion has said, “There’s a kind of urgency to it that makes it feel like we do want you to explore, but it needs to support the momentum of Hazel’s journey”.
Graphics Engine
It seems like a majority of games today, big or small, are being made in Unreal Engine 5, so it comes as a surprise to see South of Midnight using the older Unreal Engine 4. The game has been worked on for five years, employing reverse-engineered 3D modelling and stop-motion make it visually pop despite the older tech. And besides, the folktale aesthetic isn’t meant to be realistic, so an older engine won’t harm the game’s visuals much.
Setting and Tone
The game begins in a fictional town somewhere in the bayou-infested deep south of the US. Eventually the main character, Hazel, gets transported into a mythical spirit realm of sorts where Southern American folktale legends spring to life. The game has a mix of authentic landscapes representative of the American south and surrealist elements ranging from giant peaches to talking catfish. The dark fantastical tone is not dissimilar to Pan’s Labyrinth, with films like Beasts of the Southern Wild being cited as a direct inspiration for the team.
Mo-capped Characters
Hazel finds herself transported to a twisted folktale version of her Southern home. She uses her newfound Weaver magic to mend lost spirits in her search for her missing mother. She’s a confident teenager on a journey of restoration as well as self realization. The talent behind the characters are noteworthy in themselves. Ahmed Best, known for his portrayel of Jar-Jar in the Star Wars prequels, is the game’s performance and voice director. Hazel is portrayed by not one, but two actors. She’s mo-capped by Brooklyn Majors and voiced by Adriyan Rae.
Story
I can’t help but be reminded of The Wizard of Oz when hearing descriptions of South of Midnight’s plot, and not just because a disaster befalls the heroine’s home. Hazel’s hometown gets wrecked by a devastating hurricane. Suddenly, she’s spirited away into a gothic southern fantasy land occupied by talking catfish and ghost-like Haint enemies. Quite a fitting allusion to the surreal, almost dream-like atmosphere that embodies South of Midnight‘s environs. Hazel’s objective involves finding her lost mom while cleansing the land and the ghosts that linger there.
Lore
Players aren’t merely defeating these ‘Haint’ enemies though, since noteworthy ghosts leave behind haunted memories illustrating the individual stories behind the various creatures you encounter. As we see in previews, these ‘Echoes’, as the haunted memories are called, recall the creatures’ past as humans that lived in the area and how they came to inhabit the the fantastical dreamscape they currently prowl.
How Linear is it?
South of Midnight is decidedly linear with some branching exploration sprinkled throughout. There are four confirmed biomes to explore: the swamps, a place called ‘the Delta’, the Appalachians, and a location inspired by downtown New Orleans. The way you get to and from these four distinct environments seems to be through the giant talking catfish that acts as Hazel’s guide. That said, this is not entirely on-rails or anything. There’s still plenty of secret passages off the beaten path.
Parkour-like Traversal
Thankfully, it looks very smooth to get around the swamplands of the in-game world. The wall-running parkour and double jumping doesn’t look janky in the slightest, and previews have stressed how snappy the controls are in this regard. Heck, you can even adjust verticality during a wall-run for extra precision. And in case of a miscalculated jump, there’s always the ability to glide to safety using the mystical weave glider. The game’s description lists platforming and puzzles as two key aspects of South of Midnight‘s gameplay, which will hopefully make good use of Hazel’s parkour skills.
Framed as a Narrated Storybook
Each of the 14 chapters are artfully framed in their presentation. As Compulsion puts it, the chapter-based narrative is, “Like opening a book and closing it when finished”. Aiding the guidance of this storybook presentation is the dynamic narrator, who in at least one chapter happens to be the giant talking catfish, but may change in different chapters.
Unique Boss Theme Songs
South of Midnight has a lot of dynamic audio design going on. Take the end-of-chapter mythical bosses. These large guardians are a spectacle that extend beyond just an arena battle. There’s usually a whole lead-up accompanied by a unique lyrical theme specially made for that particular boss. These bluesy songs intensify as Hazel approaches the boss, helping tell the backstory through lyrics and instrumentation. Crafting unique period piece lyrical songs to each boss further hones into that clever storybook theater presentation.
Combat
Combat mostly takes place within contained arenas cordoned off by vines at the edges. This is your typical third-person action combat with blocking, dodging, and carefully timed attacks. Besides the usual stuff, Hazel has four magical abilities: a freeze stun, enemy pull, telekinetic throw, and a locked move that hasn’t been revealed yet. The regular enemies (called Haints) come in multiple varieties with their own movesets, while the big bosses have multiple phases to their fights. It’s worth pointing out that even the most enthusiastic previews criticize aspects of gameplay. And boss fights have been described as repetitive or somewhat formulaic.
Locking On
Perhaps the weakest link of the combat is the targetting lock-on. You can lock on to different targets, something which is encouraged considering how many enemies can confront Hazel at once. Other third-person action games have executed multi-target lock-on clumsily despite their best efforts (the constricting over the shoulder view of modern God of War titles come to mind). The lock-on in South of Midnight has been described by many previewers as loose and disorienting due to to enemies attacking from off-screen and the rather clunky way the camera adjusts to this when switching targets. Here’s hoping the final release has a fix for this.
Skill Tree
Even though it looks like Hazel is limited to just four magical abilities and some basic action game functions, there’s still some room for combat variety and customization with the skill tree. Each of the four magic abilities can be upgraded two times, and a tree of general abilities can upgraded using ‘Floofs’, the game’s charmingly named currency. A majority of skill tree upgrades seem to be basic stat enhancements or outright additional abilities, such as a ground pound, for example. And from the developer showcase, it’s sounding like one playthrough won’t give you enough Floofs to purchase every upgrade, leaving players to strategize which ones they want to fit their playstyle.
System Requirements
As mentioned on our South of Midnight PC spec breakdown, the minimal settings on PC require either an i3-8100 or a Ryzen 3 1300X, and a GeForce GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 580, and 12 GB of RAM. Recommended settings are a bit more demanding, but nothing too crazy: i5-7600K or a Ryzen 5 1600X, along with either a GeForce RTX 2060, a Radeon RX 6600, or an Arc A580, and 16 GB of RAM. The game doesn’t take a huge amount of storage either, with 55GB necessary to install. On Xbox Series X/S, the game is targeting 60 FPS, though previews have noted some frame stuttering and drops here or there despite turning the stop motion effect off. We’ll have to wait and see if South of Midnight can deliver on its promises when it releases April 8th on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
