The ghostly, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the more compelling trailers revealed during Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but also one of the more mysterious and easily lost amid noisier fare like the re-emergence of Fablethe disclosure of Star Wars banditsand the giant Star field info dump. What is it about? How will it play? What is his pedigree? And how will it navigate the tricky waters of its US Deep South environment?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The Short Version: It’s a magical realist occult adventure from the creators of We lucky few which will explore the folklore, music and rural settings of a fictional South – but the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying much yet about how it will play.
When is the South of Midnight release date and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No release date has been announced. Microsoft dated several games for 2024 during the showcase, but South of Midnight was not one of them – like Fable, it could be even further away. As an Xbox Game Studios release, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who makes South of Midnight?
This is the easy part. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio based in Montreal, founded by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful but sleek puzzle platformer from 2013 Contrast and that of 2018 We lucky fewa dystopian, first-person survival horror game with villainous elements set in a twisted 1960s England. Acquired by Microsoft, Compulsion became a first-party Xbox Game Studios team in 2018.
Compulsion website says it aims to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strangely yet provocatively familiar”, with rich storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” feel. The games are built around strong art styles and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The prisoner for We happy few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunterand the blues of Robert Johnson South of Midnight).
There’s also some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: narrative producer and creative specialist James Lewis moonlights from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the game. Lewis, being Black, helps ensure that the Canadian developer is careful with the setting and characters.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What is it about?
In a magical version of the modern rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a broken world by battling mythical creatures from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood in the region, said it was “loosely inspired by my wandering forgotten Mississippi farms and abandoned places.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for combat and travel. Her Weaving magic allows her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into usable shapes for the player to use,” says Sears. The effects are “packed with fractal geometry expressed in knitwear and throw rugs – everything is themed around textiles.” Hazel is powerful and funny, but will also have a flawed, human side that will be influenced by her family and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people,” says Sears.
As well as the folklore creatures – like the monster that vaguely appears in the trailer (a Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits who fear the color blue) — Hazel will encounter more ambivalent characters such as Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing giant from the trailer. He is an immortal Archon, partly inspired by Charon, the ferryman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, according to legend, made a deal with the devil at the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s side or not, and Sears hints that there could be threats in this world other than the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis don’t give much away on this, but we do know some basics from an earlier interview given before the game’s reveal. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and community developer Naila Hadjas said the team was working on a third-person narrative single-player game. It won’t have We lucky few‘s roguelike elements and, unlike that game, it won’t debut in early access. “The next game is a story, we know where we’re going,” she said.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How does Compulsion handle a game about a black woman in the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems to be proud of that South of Midnight will feature a setting and main character underrepresented in gaming, but aware of the pitfalls of doing so from the outside. That’s where Lewis, who works with developers from marginalized groups, comes in. Compulsion has also sought other outside help, including internal Microsoft resources such as Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and outside consultants. But, as Lewis says, representation at Compulsion itself, particularly on the writing team, is crucial: “The approach to this had to start with proper representation on the team, making sure we had black women and women of color in our story. team is key to understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the game deal with the bitter, racist history (and present) of the South? Lewis makes it sound like it will be acknowledged, but it’s not the main thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to affirm that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a backdrop without its troubled past, the impact of which we can still feel.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to solve racism or the troubled history of the South. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother – who all look like Hazel – will hopefully recognize and relate to.