Upcoming Horror Game The Midnight Walk And Its Hand-Crafted Clay Figures Are A Sight To Behold

When Olov Redmalm and Klaus Lyngeled, the co-directors of the upcoming first-person horror game The Midnight Walk, turn on their webcams, we’re immediately greeted by rows upon rows of clay figures. One peers at us with red eyes and a disquieting grin, jagged hair falling unevenly around a pale face, while another is a several-foot-tall giant that looms above the rest, so large that there seems to be a castle perched on its head like a crown. Each is a meticulously crafted creation that instills a mixture of creepy and cute, calling to mind any number of stop-motion classics, particularly those of Studio Laika and Tim Burton. We’re told that after molding these miniatures with a combination of clay and household objects, they’re scanned with a smartphone and eventually uploaded into Unreal Engine 5, the details and idiosyncrasies not lost in translation. It’s an approach that pays off because if there was one thing clear from our 30-minute hands-off demo of The Midnight Walk, it’s that as long as it maintains this level of visual creativity, its dark fantasy world will be one to remember.

As for where this journey begins, The Burnt One wakes up in a mausoleum with blurry vision and muffled hearing. As they stumble out of their sarcophagus, they’re given eyes and ears by a totem; you’re given these sensory organs as if you’re Samus gaining the Morph Ball upgrade because these seemingly basic capabilities are integral to exploring and surviving the creatures that prowl this place. For instance, you quickly come across a wall of dressers with dozens of drawers between them, one containing the key you need to proceed. Thankfully, you don’t need to take a trial-and-error approach because if you close your eyes, you can use audio cues to locate hidden objects, honing in on sounds like a metal detector before opening your eyes to find the exact location of the key. Later, we saw a more striking example of how sight is a central mechanic, and as a ghostly being rushed the player, they closed their eyes at the last moment to freeze this malevolent presence in place.

After solving a few puzzles in the introductory area, The Burnt One is treated to their first major reward: a striking view. Perched on a cliffside, we see a village below, its crooked spires engulfed in a blue fog that gives way to a purplish hue in the distance. It’s a sight that immediately conveys the heart of this experience, a blend of cozy and grim. Later, we meet all sorts of malicious or friendly creatures that further this gothic daydream, all defined by a tactile sense of detail thanks to the means of their creation as they’re digitally animated to evoke stop-motion aesthetics.

While Olov and Klaus didn’t shy away from Laika and Aardman Animations comparisons, the work of their studio, MoonHood, has its own identity here, one that’s even distinct from these co-directors’ previous work on Lost in Random. The ambiance is further tied together by a moody, soulful score, apparently produced and recorded by a local Gothenburg band, a fitting match to the hand-crafted feel of everything else here.

And beyond its impressive style, we eventually also got a better look at The Midnight Walk’s core gameplay loop as it mixed stealth, horror, and puzzle elements while forcing you to evade dangerous monsters. The first of these foes you come across is “the Crawler,” which lives up to its name by unnervingly shuffling around on all four legs. Its eyes are sown shut, but it will quickly track you down and instantly end you if you make a sound. While fighting against these enemies was futile, luckily, there were ways to get around them, like hiding in conveniently placed closets, Amnesia: The Dark Descent-style. There were more tricks, too, and a creepy nursery rhyme taught us that we could distract the Crawler by lighting fires, letting us get through unscathed.