South of Midnight REVIEW - gothic goodness
Rhianne Ward
“Gameplay is king.” If you've been in game criticism spaces for long enough, you're bound to have come across these three little words. They're often levied against to whatever big shiny new project graces the triple AAA space, or particularly pretty indie titles. The concern is this: games can look and sound as nice as you like, with the smoothest animations and an evocative score, but when you get down to it, the game needs to feel good too. Interactivity is, after all, the singular element that separates video games from movies or TV shows. Therefore, it stands to reason that the unique factor for this medium should be the priority, right?
Ultimately, I find this to be a reductive method of analysing games as art. Games being interactive is the dynamic that makes them uniquely cool, I'll admit, but those mechanics only work so well when they are being held up by the presentation surrounding them. Tetris doesn't hit nearly as good without that bopping OST or the little flashing effect that occurs when you match up lines on the board. Take out the unique Joker artworks, dynamic music and fire effect on high scores, and Balatro would never have achieved such monumental success. A roast dinner is made magnificent by the gravy, but you wouldn't just have gravy for your meal. The gravy is only good when placed within the context of the entire meal. Gameplay is the same.
South of Midnight, the latest game from We Happy Few developer Compulsion Games, is a mechanically light experience. Combat is pretty simple, with your standard light attacks, dodge, and an array of cooldown abilities to shake things up. It's fun, but very familiar. Platforming is much the same, combining jumps, double jumps, dashes, glides and wall runs to create an experience that is, more often than not, entertaining enough to carry me through. Beyond that, you're picking up documents that add flavour to the world, engaging in some light exploration for little goodies, and, if you're feeling spicy, maybe you'll invest in an upgrade or two. Wowee!
I might sound sarcastic - and admittedly, I'm being a bit of a bitch here - but I genuinely did have fun playing this game. It was a perpetually satisfying experience that, thanks to some intelligent pacing, never strayed into the realm of tedium. Therefore, it may surprise you to learn that I ended up in love with this game by the end. I had a blast with South of Midnight, for many reasons which the “gameplay is king” crowd will actively curse me for. However, when the presentation is just this good, I hope you'll permit me some wiggle room to speak my mind on it. This is a game best experience when you allow it to take you along for the ride.
Visuals are the first thing that are going to pop for new players. South of Midnight begins with an opening movie: a stop-motion animation following the main character, Hazel, and her sentient toy Crouton as they wander through the swamplands and forestry of the American South. They meet each other in the middle, and Hazel picks up a book titled ‘South of Midnight'. Contained within will surely be the journey to come. This works as an effective mood setter for the rest of the game, while also demonstrating the aesthetic target for this game. Of course, South of Midnight is not a stop-motion animated video game, as given the scale of this project, this would take an astonishing amount of work lasting many years. The team instead opts for character models resembling the look of clay figurines, and places a filter on top which skips frames in their animation cycles to emulate the look of stop motion. The attention to detail is pretty impressive. Characters bear fingerprint markings on their faces, suggesting the existence of puppet gods. Very scary, but also kinda cool.
That being said, I can't say I was ever particularly convinced by the attempt. The characters are still motion captured, so they walk and talk like people would. The result is a cast that feels convincingly human, which led to many emotional moments made stronger by the nuances in the mo-cap performances, but in doing so it loses touch with that original aesthetic goal. However, I wouldn't say much is lost in the end. The game still looks very distinct, with some excellent character and monster designs that I won't forget soon. The stop-motion thing feels more like an honest attempt rather than a completely botched experiment. I'll always take a game that takes a risky shot and misses rather than never bothering to fire.
It does help, of course, that South of Midnight compensates for this hiccup with a whole plethora of bullseyes. It's what I liked the most from my time with this game: it is brimming with unique creative decisions that consistently surprised me in magical little ways. It is a true feast for the senses. Like I said before, visually it is stunning, but screenshots simply don't do it justice. It is, most importantly, even more beautiful in motion. Forests brim with wildlife, raging rivers pound their banks, and magic strands flit through the air like clouds, acting as a reliable guide on Hazel’s journey. There's an astonishing attention to detail too in these spaces.
While walking through a house, I noticed the staircase was worn in the middle, paint peeled away, with indents in the old wood from decades, perhaps centuries, of comings and goings. It's always tiny, completely missable moments like these which act almost like a fourth wall break to me; a fleeting crack in the code, revealing a human being behind it who had an idea and brought it to life. That isn't a slavish devotion to creating the most authentic looking decrepit mansion possible. It's a creative choice, adding so much to the overall experience. After all, what are games if not a million individual choices tied together by string into a workable whole? It's great.
That commitment to detail extends the most to the game's sound design. The setting of the South is captured with such authenticity. I often found myself walking through areas, taking my time, soaking in the atmosphere. Most inputs are paired with a sing-song-y audio cue, the pitch varying depending on the move being used. ‘Push’ sounds different than ‘Pull’, and using the Guiding Light, the game's pathfinding ability in case you get lost, is met with unknown voices beckoning Hazel by name to wherever she must go next. It's almost like you're personally scoring the gameplay experience on top of the already excellent soundtrack, and it never stops feeling satisfying.
Speaking of, the game's original soundtrack, composed by the guy behind the Plague Tale games, Olivier Dereviere, is just incredible. Straight up, if we're not talking about this music when GOTY conversations get started, it will be an unbelievable injustice. The game has these mythical creatures whose stories of loss and regret serve to inform Hazel’s own experience, and break up the experience nicely. What ended up making them so memorable wasn't necessarily the writing, however, but the songs attached to them. For every character, there is an associated ballad, with lyrics telling their stories. If it wasn't the storytelling drawing me in, it was almost always the music. The singers bring such unbelievable gravitas to their performances. I'm listening to these songs right now and getting teary-eyed. They're just that powerful. If you take anything away from this review, I implore you to listen to this soundtrack, because there's nothing else quite like it in any game I've played before. My favourite is either Rougarou or Altamah-ha, but they all deserve their flowers.
And that's just the songs with words in them! Even tracks absent of lyrics are phenomenal, utilising a unique ensemble of instruments to create a rich and authentic Southern musical soundscape. The music of South of Midnight feels inextricably tied to its being. This wouldn't just be a lesser experience without it; it would truly be a different game entirely. Very rarely do I feel the music of a game is as important as this, but it's true. You could change the entire combat system to a turn-based RPG and it would not have as big of an impact as changing the OST. That's how crucial of an impact it has.
I hope, therefore, you understand what I mean when I say that the presentation of South of Midnight - its aesthetics and sound, the audiovisual experience - is its most defining aspect. Wandering these wildernesses is intoxicating, and I found it genuinely difficult to pull away at times. If the intent with this game was to be a love letter to the American South, then it succeeded. I fell completely in love.
I should mention that the overarching story of South of Midnight is pretty good! I really like Hazel as a protagonist. She does have that modern protag affliction where she feels it necessary to provide a little quip for every tiny thing that happens, which can get a little annoying, but usually her insights are pretty funny and the vocal performance by Adriyan Rae is great across the board so she never becomes grating. Not to mention, when the important emotional beats arrive, Rae absolutely kills it. I found on more than one occasion that moments I didn't think I'd care much about were elevated by the delivery of a line or Hazel's body language. The rest of the cast is similarly solid, complementing this mysterious setting beautifully.
I really liked the little stories Hazel uncovers throughout her journey. The one that hit me the hardest was that of Honey and Altamah-ha but they're all, on some level, effective tales that paint a vivid picture of a land rich with all the tragedy and torment for Hazel to sort through. She doesn't start the story intending to figure out people's problems, but through the power of fate, Hazel ends up leaving a trail of kindness. I like that her progression is one of discovering the importance of empathising with the people around her, and helping them change for the better. Sometimes all she can do is put the wronged party to rest, and that's okay too. To remember the victims of the past is to honour them, and god knows America had a lot of victims. It's a heavy burden to bear, but one that, by the end, Hazel carries with pride.
You know, sometimes I sit down to write a review for a game I'm not sure about, and by the end, when all my thoughts are out on the page plain as day, I end up liking that game more. South of Midnight is, to my delight, one of those. There's definitely things I can point to as flaws. The combat, while fun in its own way, feels arbitrary, and the game could have honestly done without. Like I said before, the stop motion element never really comes together cohesively, so there are times when animations and character models feel a bit stiff and lifeless. The writing can sometimes come across a bit more heavy-handed than I'd like, and the game is inundated with tutorials explaining exactly what things do and how to progress so you never get lost or frustrated, but when I turned off the pop-ups, the experience became much more engaging. It sometimes feels like South of Midnight is terrified the average player won't stick around long enough to properly enjoy it, which is fair, but I still think Compulsion should have had more faith in their capacity for crafting an absorbing world people will want to explore and unpack. I know that worked for me, at the very least.
However, I find these problems are quite easy to look past. Combat encounters are often short, so if they ever got annoying, I knew they'd be over quickly. The game might not hit those aesthetic ambitions, but the look and feel of the game is unique enough to work all on its own, so I forgot it was even an issue past a certain point. And like I said, over-tutorialising is only an issue insofar as you allow it to be, since much of that stuff can be turned off in the settings in favour of a smoother experience. What remains after that - the stuff I absolutely love - is what lingers in my mind days after completing South of Midnight, and I think that's what is most important.
In the end, what I like the most about South of Midnight is its ambitious spirit. Even when it fails, I could always tell that it was going for something cool. Even if it didn't work out, I'll always respect the attempt. In a gaming landscape that often prioritises an amalgamation of design sensibilities, it's refreshing for a game like South of Midnight to come out and be completely, unapologetically itself. The world needs more games with wild creative spirit like this, and I hope Compulsion finds success from its efforts in the end. You guys did good. Really, really good.
