A short year after its announcement, South of Midnight offered a first gameplay presentation at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024, allowing you to discover the very original universe imagined by Compulsion Games, which can now benefit from Microsoft’s resources, following the acquisition of the studio in 2018. To wait until the next release of a trailer, we have gathered all the information on the title based on what is available on Xbox Wire.
South of Midnight, what is it?
South of Midnight is a third-party action-adventure game from the developers of Contrast and We Happy Few. The game takes place in the deep south of the United States and puts you in the shoes of Hazel, who explores the myths and encounters the creatures of southern folklore in a universe that is both macabre and fantastical.
When her hometown is struck by disaster, Hazel is called to become a Weaver, a magician who can mend bonds and minds. With her new abilities, she will face dangerous creatures, unravel her family’s past and, perhaps, finally find her place.
After a devastating storm in Prospero, Hazel finds herself in a gothic version of the American South where reality and fantasy intertwine. In this initiatory adventure, she must save her mother and explore the complex webs of folklore and family secrets to discover her identity.
She will have to wield an ancient power to heal creatures and reveal the traumas that haunt them, or use the magic of weaving to fight the destructive Haints, explore the different regions of the southern United States and repair the cracks in the great tapestry .
The trailer explained
In this trailer located about a third of the way through the story, we find Hazel, accompanied by Catfish, a talkative character who will follow her throughout her adventure. After a Category 5 hurricane, Hazel lost her mother, but awakened magical “Weaving” powers, allowing her to manipulate the energy of the universe. These new powers come at just the right time, as reality begins to unravel, plunging Hazel into a world where reality and fantasy merge, populated by folkloric creatures and ravaged by the corruption left by the hurricane.
At the start of the trailer, Hazel and Catfish follow in her mother’s footsteps, but come face to face with one of the game’s mythical creatures: Two-Toed Tom. This blind albino alligator, as big as an island, found new hunting grounds after a massive flood. Following Catfish’s advice, Hazel must go to a ruined church and ring the bell to attract Tom and be able to escape. During this sequence, we see Hazel use various Weaving powers to overcome obstacles until she encounters a Haint.
Haints are the recurring enemies of the game, taking many forms. In this trailer, we encounter a “Brute”, a mass of negative energy formed by surrounding trauma. Hazel engages in combat using her Weaving powers, combining magical tools and spells to weaken the Haint’s dark energy. Eventually, she has the ability to “Unravel” this energy, which literally repairs the reality around her. Flowers then bloom, symbolizing repair rather than destruction.
La conception de South of Midnight
South of Midnight Creative Director David Sears, Art Director Whitney Clayton and Game Director Jasmin Roy provided details on how the game was designed. In this game, story influences every aspect : the combat, the boss design, the art, and even the music.
In its entirety, this is the message that Hazel gives off, her conception of combat, her powers. Everything is a metaphor for Weaving: Weavers are supposed to put things right, to do good in the world. It literally repairs the tapestry, and with creatures, including Haints, we spent a lot of time making sure it was clear that when you attack or interact, you do so in a non-lethal but aggressive way. You do it because you’re helping, taking the weight off all that trauma.
Compulsion presents the game as a series of distinct chapters, each with a defined beginning and end, while providing opportunities for exploration throughout the adventure.
[Les joueuses et les joueurs] are truly in control of their exploration. We designed the environment to encourage players to follow the story while giving them more to discover and experience. You can sometimes see more open, hub-like sections.
Le gameplay
Everything Hazel can accomplish is powered by her Weave, intrinsically linking your actions to the primary goal: repairing what is broken. The game offers an original gameplay concept: in addition to movement powers (such as gliding with a Weaver’s sail) and combat powers (such as Untangling Enemies), Hazel will also obtain a series of spells demonstrating the usefulness of Weaving.
For now, we don’t want to reveal everything in this gameplay trailer. [Mais] spells will be used for movement, problem solving and combat. This is how Hazel expresses the use of her power, through the different gameplay elements.
Available powers include Weave, Push, and Pull. Weaving allows you to attach objects to make crossing easier and to bind enemies. Pushing and Pulling are used to move objects to solve puzzles and also influence the dynamics of combat, allowing you to control enemy placement. You’ll unlock more powers as you progress, each with multiple functionalities. Turning your spells into versatile tools illustrates that Hazel’s powers are not limited to destruction or survival.
We sought to create a deep connection with [la tradition] while also incorporating that Southern Gothic feel to it – this idea of taking women’s professions and making them powerful, because we knew we wanted a female protagonist. Which gave rise to the idea of a lively and expressive lace fabric
The world of South of Midnight
Each new region in the game will have its own biome, reflecting the great diversity of the landscapes of the Southern United States. All of these biomes are inspired by real places. The section we see here is just before leaving the flooded areas and entering countryside reminiscent of the Mississippi Delta. However, thanks to the approach of magical realism, a concept dating back to 1924, Compulsion can surprise players by playing with their expectations throughout this journey through its universe.
Locations will appear deeply rooted in our real world. To create this section of the game, the developers even visited a real ghost town in Mississippi, infested with alligators. However, as we travel, we will see how these areas have been invaded by the game’s mythical creatures, bringing with them strange and fascinating transformations.
The world Hazel comes from is inspired by the contemporary Deep South. But the deeper you delve into it, the more mystical and surreal things become. We aimed to give the feeling of being drawn into a folk tale, rather than just walking through a door like in Alice in Wonderland.
A soundtrack mixed with the narration
Each mythical creature will have its own musical theme, composed by Olivier Deriviere (A Plague Tale: Requiem, Get Even). The lyrics, written by Sears and his team, will be integrated across the Realms. These songs will become more and more complex and react to your actions, until full lyrics begin to tell the stories of the creatures you are trying to avoid and, ultimately, heal.
I wanted the story of the origin of the creatures to be present. If you had nowhere else to find it, you could listen to the whole track and it would tell you. It’s like a puzzle piece that you’ve collected in the character’s story.
The Myth of Tom
Most folktales need antagonists, and in the trailer we meet one. Two-Toed Tom is inspired by stories told around the fire about ancient, seemingly indestructible, giant alligators. Tom will “haunt” this chapter of Hazel’s story. What we’ve seen are only the edges of his hunting territory, but Tom will reappear several times during the exploration of his region, eventually leading to a confrontation. This not only extends a “boss fight” across an entire section of the game, but also turns each creature into a character in its own right, rather than just a conflict mechanic.
Tom is the only mythical creature in the game who was not a human before his transformation. People transformed Tom: he was an alligator born with the will to live and eat, and these things seemed to work very well. Because, like many reptiles, it will continue to grow as long as it can eat. And because he has a traumatic past and has become a creature of folklore and urban legend, he will persist and continue to grow bigger and bigger.
Hazel won’t kill the creatures that stand in her way, but she will heal them, easing the pain that turned them into monsters.
The use of stop motion
The team carefully adjusted the intensity of the stop motion between cutscenes, exploration, and combat. What most sets South of Midnight apart from other games is the team’s total commitment to this unique aesthetic.
It took a lot of testing, a lot of adjustments. There’s a lot of work and technical details that go into the look of stop-motion. We had to experiment to determine which techniques worked and distinguish these from visual errors. Much of the game, from a visual perspective, is the result of a careful creative process, where traditional hand-crafting methods were studied and reinterpreted to create the visual elements of the game. The artists had to adopt a artisanal approach, manually reconstructing every detail to bring the game elements to life. And on the animation side, they were trying to imitate what happens when you do stop-motion animation.
This very original experience will be available sometime in 2025 on Xbox Series X|S and PC. Xbox Game Studios obliges, the title will be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass from its launch!
