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When I’m running and jumping through the swamps of the Deep South in South of Midnight, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve played this game before. It’s not because of the setting, which is certainly fresh and interesting, and it’s not because of the visuals, which are absolutely gorgeous and unlike anything I’ve seen in a game before. No, the reason South of Midnight feels so familiar is because it feels like a dozen other games I played 20 years ago, in the heyday of the PS2, the GameCube, and the Xbox.
South of Midnight is an action platformer that sees players stepping into the shoes of Hazel, a resident of the town of Prospero, as she embarks on a magical journey to save her mother after a hurricane washes away their home. She gets some magic powers, passed down through the generations, meets a giant magic catfish, and fights a lot of weird, thread-based monstrosities.
I’m downplaying South of Midnight’s story a little bit, because there’s much more to it than that, but it’s not the main draw here. It’s a good story, with some dark turns that surprised me, likeable characters, and great voice acting. But it’s the least interesting part of the game, even if it’s one of its best parts.
What’s much more interesting is the setting in which South of Midnight takes place. Prospero is a vague amalgamation of America’s Deep South, a setting that’s very rarely explored and home to mythology that’s explored even less. This is a game that relies on that mythology to set the scene, and it does a really fantastic job of that, with some delightful folklore that you might’ve never heard of before front and center through the game’s major moments. It’s clear that the development team put a lot of effort into researching and presenting this folklore, and there are some very deep cuts — one folk monster present in the game originates from a town of barely 2000 people in rural Alabama, and only a few vague blog posts from decades ago even mention it.
The storytelling and presentation is helped along by the fascinating visual style on offer, which aims to replicate stop-motion animation. This is present in both cutscenes and gameplay, and there’s a lot of variability in its intensity. In high-impact cutscenes the effect is cranked up to the max, and it looks indistinguishable from a stop-motion film from the likes of Laika, while gameplay eases it back a bit, mixing lower framerate animations with smooth motion and camerawork. It’s a genuinely impressive and innovative visual style that is largely unmatched by any other game in recent memory, which makes it all the more confusing that it’s attached to gameplay that in every other way feels like the opposite of innovation.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes South of Midnight feel so dated. It’s an obviously lower budget game, so things can be a bit janky in places — it’s not uncommon to get caught on the edge of a ledge, for example, slipping into a loop between falling off and staying on. It also feels somewhat clunky to control, with platforming and combat both feeling not quite right. They’re good enough to get the job done, and I don’t think they ever frustrated or annoyed me, but there’s no denying the rift between a game like this and modern action platformers.
It’s made even more apparent by the slow introduction of combat and traversal abilities over the course of the game. Near the beginning of the game, when all you can really do is run, jump, hit, and dodge, every moment feels like a fight not with the enemies you’re up against, but the game itself. The ability to push and pull enemies in combat and objects in the world improves the game feel, putting you on more even footing with the game’s shaky design, and further additions beyond that go even further. By the time the credits roll, South of Midnight feels almost like the start of any other modern game, if not for the jank and design choices inherent to it.
Level design shares the same traits, with mostly straight corridors that can still be somewhat confusing to navigate, a handful of secret collectibles to discover and pick up, and semi-scripted sequences like walls to sprint along and floating anchors to grapple to. Combat takes place exclusively in walled-in arenas, and boss fights are mostly scripted events that typically have you dodging or attacking for a few minutes, interacting with a specific gimmick, and then repeating until you knock down a health bar. It’s all firmly planted in the design ethos of yesteryear, and I’d almost have believed it if somebody told me this was a remaster of a game from 2005.
Here’s the thing, though: I don’t think this dated design is necessarily a bad thing. There are some modern niceties, as you’d expect for a game released in 2025, but it feels almost nostalgic to play a game that’s so anchored in the past. I don’t know if it was an intentional design decision to make a game that would feel at home on the PS2, or if a lower budget and unfamiliarity with the genre accidentally produced such a result, but it’s charming in a way.
South of Midnight is a game that echoes the design language of games 20 years its senior, wrapped up in a fascinating setting and one of the most unique art styles modern gaming has to offer. It’s clunky and dated at its core, but also somehow charming and nostalgic. It’s a weird one, to say the least, and I probably wouldn’t play it again, but if a sequel was announced tomorrow I’d probably still add it to my wishlist.
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