South of Midnight Knows that the South Will Always Be Haunted By Its Past

As that music shows, South of Midnight consistently looks to the real South for aesthetic inspiration, but it also digs into Southern folklore (which, in many cases, means African folklore) for many of its themes and mystical story beats. Supernatural figures guide and hinder Hazel, from a wise creole catfish, to the Acadian sleep paralysis demon known as Kooshma, to a shape-changing, juke joint-owning rougaroux. Hazel eases the suffering of many of these magical beings by confronting the worst ghosts from the South’s past—slavery, racism, the exploitation of workers forced to work inhuman hours and live in mill towns, an upper class that lives parasitically on the poor. She helps these Southern myths just like her mother, a social worker, helps those in less metaphoric types of need—and unlike her grandmother Bunny, who owns most of Prospero and feels no mercy for or responsibility towards anybody, and whose words (and cheekbones) are sharper than any knife. (The relationship between the mixed-race Hazel and her white grandmother Bunny subtly explores a racial dynamic rarely investigated by mainstream videogames; the game absolutely could have dug deeper into that, and I honestly can’t decide if it’s a sign of restraint or cowardice that it doesn’t.)

It channels the South where it matters most: in its atmosphere, which is thick as molasses and as haunted as the handful of recordings made by Robert Johnson in the ‘30s. Prospero feels like a place frozen in time, its small downtown of boarded-up storefronts evoking long-faded successes, and its outskirts dotted by abandoned shacks, decaying company homes, and a moonshining operation that hasn’t been used in decades but is still largely, surprisingly intact. You can feel the heat surrounding Hazel, the layer of sweat and dirt that sticks to everybody after just a few minutes outdoors down here. A late stage is set in an otherworldly New Orleans full of floating buildings and exploited spirits, and it’s a masterclass in breathing atmosphere into a game. It does turn the South into a cartoon to an extent, but only to get to a perceptive larger truth about it. 

It also clearly understands the politics of the region. The United States will probably never really account for the twin acts of genocide it was forged in—the murder and displacement of its indigenous people, and the enslavement and subsequent oppression of its Black population—and the ghosts of that past are always most vivid, most tangible in the South. And we’re still the poorest, least educated part of the country because that is how our leaders and our ruling class have always wanted it, an endless cycle of poverty and enforced ignorance engineered to preserve a society built on discrimination and inequality. South of Midnight doesn’t preach its politics over a megaphone, but they’re still overt and unwavering. Hazel comes across the spirits of slaves fleeing through the Underground Railroad, of millworkers crushed by capitalism, of good people driven to violence and death by bigotry and abuse, and you’d have to be a calloused son of a bitch to not land on the only right side of those issues. Neither Hazel nor the game ever directly lectures anybody, but its perspective is unmistakable, and unmistakably just. 

There’s an obvious power to interacting with these characters and these situations instead of just reading about them. That’s the strength of games: it can make things feel more immediate, more personal than a book or movie. But just as its combat feels out of place, South of Midnight also isn’t as confident in its level design as it is its politics. Levels aren’t especially straightforward, but they’re almost always a little obvious; if you see two ways to go, and the glowing spectral trail that serves as your guide tells you to go one way, always go the other way first, because there will almost definitely be important collectibles there. Hazel can unlock and power-up abilities from a skill tree using a currency she calls “floofs.” You earn floofs after every fight scene, but most of the floofs you’ll find are scattered throughout the levels. They’re rarely that hard to find, but you’ll always have to keep an eye out for different paths to walk down and nooks and crannies to explore if you want enough floofs to unlock every skill. The level design doesn’t have that sense of reluctantly accounting for expectations like the combat does, but it’s also not particularly elegant. It more than suffices, though.

That tension between being a game that people play and an immersive narrative that people experience is what most defines South of Midnight. The “walking sim” tag is some nonsense verbiage cooked up by dorks to belittle games whose stories they don’t understand, but South of Midnight would be a stronger piece of work if it more closely leaned into that end of the ludonarrative spectrum. But it’s a game with a sizable budget made by Microsoft for a wide audience, so obviously there has to be some action to it. That action sticks out like a sore thumb, but South of Midnight is strong enough where it counts, in its story and in the evocative world it creates, to make up for the drudge work of its combat. Don’t misread its Southern Gothic trappings as an accurate reflection of what the South is actually like today (I’ve said this dozens of times here at Paste, but the best, most recognizable version of the modern South in pop culture remains Danny McBride’s HBO TV shows), but if you’re quick to dismiss the entire region for its politics, South of Midnight might help you understand how and why it became this way. It’s an empathetic game that genuinely loves the maligned, misunderstood part of the country that made me, and hopefully it will speak to non-Southerners just as much.

South of Midnight was developed by Compulsion Games and published by Xbox Game Studios. Our review is based on the Xbox Series X|S version. It is also available on PC.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.