Everything We Know About South of Midnight
When is South of Midnight coming out?
We don’t have a specific date yet, but the Xbox Games Showcase gave us a South of Midnight release date of 2025.
Which platforms will South of Midnight be on?
Published by Xbox Game Studios, South of Midnight is an Xbox exclusive game coming soon
Xbox Series X|S and Windows. Since it’s a first-party exclusive, we won’t see it on PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch.
Is South of Midnight coming to Xbox Game Pass?
Yes, indeed! South of Midnight comes from Xbox first-party studio Compulsion Games (the developers behind We Happy Few) and will be launching directly on Game Pass when it launches in 2025.
What is South of Midnight about?
South of Midnight is set in the American Deep South, in a world where black magic and folklore exist everywhere. In an Xbox Wire interview last year, creative director David Sears explained how important magical realism is to the ideas behind South of Midnight. “It comes from the concept that monsters are real — all you have to do is jump the fence in the backyard. The further you go from the influences of civilization, the more magical the world becomes… Magical realism is one of the business cards from Southern Gothic. It’s a license to bring magic into the modern world and to have creatures there that are just accepted. We’re not going to dump information on you in the game, and that’s in the spirit of magical realism, right? We explain enough so that you just accept it.”
In South of Midnight, our character Hazel must become a Weaver (someone who can use weaving magic to magically repair and restore dangerous creatures and broken bonds) after a hurricane strikes her hometown of Prospero. The South of Midnight Xbox page tells us that Hazel will “confront and subdue dangerous creatures, untangle the webs of her own family’s shared past, and—if she’s lucky—find her way to a place that feels like home.” It sounds like there’s an added layer of mystery to it, as Hazel will also be attempting to save her mother, “weave the tears into the Great Tapestry,” and discover her own identity.
An interesting aspect of South of Midnight’s story is that according to the South of Midnight site, the game’s story “lies within a storybook presentation that develops throughout the game. Like opening a book and closing it as Once you finish it, each chapter will be led by a dynamic narrator.”
The setting, meanwhile, is heavily inspired by “the Deep South mythos.” Compulsion Games says that Prospero is a “lush, dilapidated” area, and the game’s music is also inspired by the South, with “our character-driven lyrical score that incorporates a wide range of instruments and vocalists with a personal touch of dark folktale essence.” Intriguingly, according to an Xbox Wire interview, each creature will have their own theme song that will eventually evolve into lyrics telling their backstory (you can see a bit of this with Two-Toed Tom in the gameplay trailer).
In addition to the game’s dark, folkloric atmosphere, another aspect that immediately stands out is its distinctive, slightly shaky, stop-motion art style: “Continuing Compulsion’s signature direction, characters and shapes are clearer, ‘handcrafted’ and enhanced by stop -motion-effects. -motion animation treatment.”
We get a few more hints at what to expect from the world itself from that Xbox Wire interview after Xbox Games Showcase 2024 with creative director David Sears, art director Whitney Clayton and game director Jasmin Roy, where the world of South of Midnight is detailed as “broadly linear”, with each region having its own biome. “So the way we’ve built the environment is because we want players to follow the story but have more to sink their teeth into – you can see some more open, hub-like sections at times,” Roy explains.
What kind of game is South of Midnight?
South of Midnight is a third-person action-adventure game set in the American Deep South. Compulsion’s FAQ tells us that the game’s Weaving magic will focus on combat, traversal, and puzzle elements, and that South of Midnight is for “anyone interested in a new fantasy mythology with deeply thematic gameplay. Players who enjoy thoughtful yet dynamic gameplay experiences.” We get a glimpse of Hazel using her powers for traversal and against enemies in the gameplay trailer.
Hazel’s Weaving powers will clearly be key, but Compulsion seems mostly interested in the idea of Hazel fixing the world. “From top to bottom, that’s the message behind Hazel, her battle design, her powers… Everything is a Weaving metaphor — Weavers are supposed to put things right, do good in the world,” Sears says in the latest Xbox Wire interview. “She literally fixes the tapestry, and with creatures — including Haints — we’ve spent a lot of time making it clear that when you attack or interact, you do so in a non-lethal but aggressive way. You do it because you’re helping — takes away the weight of all this trauma.” You can even see the physical side of this in the gameplay trailer (mentioned below) when flowers and greenery emerge after Hazel confronts an enemy.
List of South of Midnight Achievements
The South of Midnight achievements aren’t available yet, but we’ll post an update here once we have them.
South of Midnight trailers
So far we’ve had the first announcement trailer for South of Midnight, which captures its atmosphere perfectly:
We recently got the Gameplay Reveal trailer for Xbox Games Showcase 2024. This was an extended look at the game, featuring over four minutes of Hazel (and her companion Catfish) adventures.
South of Midnight is one of our most anticipated Xbox exclusives, and we’ll be sure to update this overview as soon as we know anything new.