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dkirschner's South of Midnight (PC)

[June 24, 2025 06:15:43 AM]

I've got several of these to update, burning through Game Pass games before the end of the month as I am.

I enjoyed South of Midnight, especially for the creative writing, the neat animation, and the stellar music. The combat, while fine, gets repetitive, and the game starts to drag toward the end because of this and the way that most of the 13 or 14 chapters unfold in the same formulaic way.

What's cool about the writing? The game takes place in the Deep South (something like New Orleans or Mississippi or the bayou). It features Southern folklore. The main character is Black and the game deals with slavery and racial trauma. It also deals with child abuse, social work, interracial relationships, grief and loss, and more. As someone who teaches social work students, it was really cool to have the main character's mother be a social worker, and to have all these themes be important parts of the story!

The game is divided into chapters, and each chapter or two covers a particular story of some tragedy or trauma happening and the victim turning into a monster. The main plot is that Hazel's (main character) house with her mother in it gets swept away in hurricane waters and she goes to find and save her. On the way, she meets a big catfish (the narrator) and various other characters, some related to her family and others related to the traumas she heals. And that's basically how the chapters play out. Hazel enters a new area and finds out there's a sad story there that explains whatever monster is around. Then she has to find the three or four memories that tell the story of the trauma, fighting in arena battles to get each one. Then, she has to go to the monster and cleanse it. Then, there is a platforming chase sequence. Repeat.

All combat takes place in arenas. You walk into an area, it becomes gated off, enemies spawn, and you kill them. There are several different enemy types that behave quite differently, and a bunch of them will spawn together (especially later on). So, you'll have like two aggressive melee enemies, one "healer" that protects an enemy, one that stands back and fires homing missiles, and another giant one that spreads rot on the ground. And they're all flitting around the arena attacking you. It can feel a bit chaotic, but you have some neat tools to handle them. You have a push and a pull, a stun that makes enemies take extra damage, a strong area attack, and you can send your little doll companion to mind control one. You can also like purge an enemy after you kill it, which deals some AoE damage and slightly heals you. It all feels good and can be challenging, but like I said, there is just too much of it. The combat starts to feel like padding.

Another thing that got old by the end was searching for skill points to upgrade attacks. These are collectibles hidden all over the place that require you to search in every nook and cranny if you want them. You don't have to find them all, but I think the upgrades helped me in combat. They are often obtained by the lightest of platforming and puzzle solving, "going the wrong way" on purpose. These give you either 5, 10, or 20 skill points. Upgrades require around 100 points on average to unlock, so you have to find a lot of these pickups to get rewarded. I didn't mind this too much because the environments are pretty and the movement and platforming feel good. So, I did enjoy the combat and exploration for a while, but searching high and low for skill points became tedious.

One thing that consistently made me want to keep going despite knowing that I was going to keep having to fight and do an end-of-chapter chase sequence was the music. As you get closer to the monster in each chapter, there is like a special song that starts playing. So, when you're searching for Two-Toed Tom, a giant alligator (yes, he is a victim!), a song starts playing about Two-Toed Tom, ramping up in intensity through a boss battle, almost seeming to narrate what you're doing. I LOVED the music because it was related to the story and what was going on in the game.

I'm glad I played South of Midnight. I'd recommend if you want something narratively unique.