2025 Preview: South of Midnight is Compulsion’s chance to show it can do substance as well as style
If Xbox’s Deep South adventure plays as well as it looks, South of Midnight could be special
In a world where so many people complain about frame rate drops in games, South of Midnight is taking an interesting approach.
The gameplay footage shown off by Xbox last summer showed a game with a camera running at a smooth 60 frames per second, but characters running at anything but. This is a deliberate move by Canadian studio Compulsion Games, designed to give protagonist Hazel and the creatures she encounters a sort of stop-motion appearance as if players are taking control of an animated movie.
It’s a striking look and one that will doubtless be divisive, potentially annoying some players who prefer the smooth animations expected from action-adventure games. But then, Compulsion has never been a studio that appears to be interested in bowing to convention.
Its debut title Contrast was set in the 1920s and took influences from burlesque, vaudeville, Belle Époche and Art Nouveau aesthetics, while its second offering We Happy Few was set in a dystopian alternate reality 1960s London. With that in mind, it should have come as no major shock that the studio’s third game would try something wildly different again.
This time the story takes place in a fictionalised version of America’s Deep South, where Hazel’s hometown has been destroyed by a hurricane. This appears to be no typical natural disaster, however, because the aftermath finds Hazel in a sort of Southern Gothic environment where she encounters numerous characters and creatures from American South folklore.
If the stop-motion aesthetic is likely to split opinion, the character design will almost certainly be more widely loved. Last summer’s gameplay footage introduced us to an enormous catfish who we’ve been told will follow Hazel throughout the game, as well as a massive alligator enemy called Two-Toed Tom: both look tremendously detailed.
One of the more interesting aspects of South of Midnight is that while it’s got its fair share of combat (as you’d expect from any 3D action-adventure game these days), Hazel’s attacks are designed to be constructive, not destructive.
Hazel is a Weaver, which means she has special powers that, according to Xbox, let her “rework the tapestry of energy that makes up the universe”.
What this means in plain English is that during combat she’s not attacking the mythical enemies she faces (known as Haints), she’s using her powers to wear down their dark energy, weakening them enough to let her perform a special ‘unravelling’ finishing move, which yanks them into nothingness.
“One of the more interesting aspects of South of Midnight is that while it’s got its fair share of combat, Hazel’s attacks are designed to be constructive, not destructive.”
When she does this, the enemy disappears and the area around is is magically covered with bright flowers. Hazel’s quest isn’t one of death and destruction, she’s trying to rebuild her world and restore it to its former beauty, the way it looked before it was destroyed.
While we’re sold on the aesthetic, the proof will always be in the playing, particularly given the studio involved. Compulsion’s commitment to art design can never be in doubt, but the reality is that Contrast and We Happy Few gained Metacritic scores of 65 and 64 respectively, meaning the studio is still waiting on its first unanimous critical success.
While there’s every chance that South of Midnight will end that wait, nobody gets a free pass based on art design alone, and now we just have to see if the substance is just as accomplished as the style.
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