South of Midnight Review – A Modern Southern Gothic Fairytale

OVERVIEW

South of Midnight is an action-adventure game where players will explore various myths and legends of the Deep South while uncovering their families’ secret past.

Developer: Compulsion Games
Release Date: April 3rd, 2025
Price: $39.99
Platforms: Steam, Windows, Xbox X|S

Entering the World of South of Midnight

Screenshot of Hazel riding on top of a giant mystical catfish in a swamp from the game South of Midnight.

In South of Midnight, players take on the role of Hazel and embark on a mission to rescue her mother after flood waters from a hurricane wash away their home with her mother inside. On this journey, Hazel discovers she is a Weaver: a magical mender of broken bonds and spirits. Players will have to help Hazel master her new abilities and face off against mythical creatures.

Screenshot of a strange doll from the game South of Midnight in a burrow.

From the moment the South of Midnight opens, players will be able to tell that they are in for a mystical experience. The opening title sequence on its own is a beautifully crafted piece of animation. It gave me what my favorite Tim Burton films’ lack regarding representation.

Screenshot of the five difficulty levels in the South of Midnight video game.

South of Midnight features five game modes: Scryer, Healer, Weaver, Grand Weaver, and Custom Tapestry. Scryer focuses on the game’s story and removes all challenge from combat. Healer focuses more on the game’s story while making combat more accessible. Weaver is the default difficulty and offers more balanced combat. Grand Weaver is for players looking for more of a challenge in combat. Custom Tapestry lets players fine-tune the difficulty of their gameplay experience.

How Does South of Midnight Handle Accessibility?

Screenshot of the menu narration settings in the game options.

Before players jump into South of Midnight’s story, they will have a variety of accessibility options they can set up to improve their gameplay experience. The first setting players have the option to enable is a Menu Narration setting. This acts as a screen reader for the game’s menus, reading the options whenever a player hovers over the words. The voice’s pace, volume, and pitch can also be adjusted.

Players can play South of Midnight with a controller or a keyboard and mouse setup. Both have the option to remap keybinds. An issue that I ran into using custom keybinds to make combat more accessible was that every time I closed and opened the game, the settings would reset. I was able to remap them easily, however, this may be tedious for players who take frequent breaks.

The guiding strand can also be adjusted so that it extends fully between objective points or fades out after a certain distance. The strand can also be set so that it does not leave the screen or fades away after a short time. A guiding strand can also be given to the players’ tiny companion when they enter burrows.

Screenshot of the colorblind settings in South of Midnight.

Other accessibility options include the ability to adjust the color profiles of various indicators, such as enemy and ally health and Hazel’s health bars. Players can also further customize these by manually setting each item’s color. This setting becomes very useful as players progress further into the game and encounter more challenging combat scenarios.

Combat Is Challenging but Not Impossible

Going into the combat side of the game, combat in South of Midnight is challenging in a good way. If players immediately set their preferred keybinds for combat, the first few encounters with haints will go very quickly. I tried using the default settings at first and could not get past the first combat encounter; however, as soon as I switched to keybinds that I am more familiar with, I was done in seconds.

As players journey deeper into the swamps and forests in South of Midnight, they will unlock more abilities to use in combat and traversal. These abilities have cooldowns that players have to manage during combat. Outside of combat, players can use the same abilities without a cooldown limit. Players can also upgrade their abilities using Floofs they collect while exploring the world and clearing out tangles.

While combat can be easy enough in the first few chapters of the game, encounters quickly increase in difficulty, and players will even face mythical creatures in battle. These boss fights were a welcome experience that helped keep combat fresh. Each boss has a unique moveset and multiple phases of combat that require players to strategize on the fly.

South of Midnight is a Refreshing Take on Old Legends

Screenshot of SOuth of Midnights Rougaru howling at Hazel.

While engaging in combat encounters is the primary way players will remove tangles and restore the Grand Tapestry, South of Midnight is a very story-driven game at its core.

The story in South of Midnight is a fantastic balance of mystery and supernatural elements. In addition to engaging with NPCs, players can find various notes and items around the world that reveal long-forgotten secrets of the former and current inhabitants of the Prospero region.

Many of these secrets have tragic endings that have warped into stigmas, which are damaging the Grand Tapestry, the fabric of the universe connecting all things. This damage also creates terrifying haints, which the player must battle against before unraveling the twisted knots to restore things to how they should be.

South of Midnight does a fantastic job of bringing Southern American folklore and superstitions to life. Through the mention of creatures and beings such as boohags, haints, and even the Rougarou, South of Midnight players can find a wide range of Creole diaspora cultural representation, especially those stemming from West African and Caribean cultures.

Screenshot of Cruton the doll in a rabbit burrow looking at a small bed with a rabbit toy on it.

Another way South of Midnight uses subtle details in the world to tie in more of these folktales is through the use of animals. Rabbits and foxes will lead Hazel and the player to various items and objectives. Rabbits are often present in stories about a clever trickster using their wit to survive.

Players who grew up in the South may immediately recognize the use of blue throughout South of Midnight’s environment. The faded blue can be found on porches and houses and is even used to mark platforms the player can climb. This blue is sometimes known as Haint Blue and is a form of protection against evil spirits, preventing them from entering homes.

In addition to folktales, South of Midnight tackles heavy topics such as childhood trauma, loss and grief, and familial trauma. The game handles these very heavy topics in an empathetic way, without excusing harmful behavior that can result from some of these. South of Midnight acknowledges that pain but does not sit and try to excuse the resulting behavior if it is intentionally malicious. At the same time, Hazel will try to help characters that unintentionally cause harm see that it is okay to start learning to forgive themselves for things out of their control.

The Representation in South of Midnight is Peak

Screenshot of Hazel and her mom having a playful conversation.

South of Midnight manages to achieve something that so many games fail to do, and that is having a relatable Black protagonist, especially one that is Southern, that does not become a harmful caricature. So often, Black girls and women in media are written as one-dimensional stereotypes.

Hazel’s character has many layers, which makes her relatable. She is headstrong, determined, and athletic, but she is also empathetic to people, animals, and even creatures. She finds things that some people would think are strange cute. While she will battle against these supernatural creatures, she is not completely fearless. It’s all of these personality traits, coupled with such a strong story, that sets South of Midnight apart from other games in terms of representation.

Screenshot of Mrs Pearl from the South of Midnight game.

South of Midnight does an exceptional job of not making the protagonist the only realistic character players encounter. The human and non-human characters in the game each have unique personalities that we can see from their wardrobe and homes and also how they talk.

The dialogue in South of Midnight does an amazing job of capturing various types of Southern dialects, especially those often found in areas like Louisiana. Southern dialects often become an exaggerated gag in video games. It is refreshing to see these dialects handled with so much grace, especially when they are dialects you grew up around.

A Hauntingly Beautiful World

A swampy forest area in the South of Midnight video game.

The environment in South of Midnight has a hauntingly beautiful atmosphere. It feels like walking through a Southern Gothic fairytale. Every step players take is bursting with life, big and small. Fighting rabbits scatter away when players approach them, mosquitoes and dragonflies buzz around the swamp, and giant snapping turtles move slowly across the mud. Even the burrow segments of the game have small scenes with animals that make them feel otherworldly. The level design in South of Midnight is one of the best examples of cohesive level design so far this year.

Each character in the game is unique. Their designs fit the painterly style of South of Midnight really well. Anytime the game introduces a new character, so much of their personality shines through their character model’s design. Each character feels like a person you know or have seen on the street. Even characters that appear as ghostly memories stand out from one another, which is a nice detail.

South of Midnight also does a great job of using music and sound effects to drive the flow as players go from objective to objective. Each level has a unique score that slowly builds as players clear the stigma from the area and eventually encounter an area’s boss. In addition, each boss’s final song reveals their feelings and responses to the trauma they experienced.

Final Thoughts on South of Midnight

South of Midnight is an amazing gaming experience that is worthy of being a Game of the Year contender. There are so many accessibility features that open the game up to a wider audience of gamers. Combat is fast-paced and can make players think on their feet.

The story in South of Midnight is a refreshing change of pace that highlights American folklore. The writing celebrates the roots of these stories without making everything a hollow caricature. When it comes to representation, South of Midnight does a phenomenal job of making realistic and relatable characters with layers to their personalities.

Every environment in South of Midnight was stunning and full of so much detail and care. Combined with an amazing soundtrack, every step you take in the game feels like being transported into a fairytale.

If you enjoy games with plenty of adventure and action that also explore folklore, then you should give South of Midnight a try. South of Midnight is available on Xbox Series X|S and Steam.