South of Midnight is a Southern Gothic platforming game about the legends and myths of the Deep South, and it’s okay!
South of Midnight
Developer: Compulsion Games
Price: $40
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, and PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with a Xbox code for review
Set in a fictional town in the American South, South of Midnight tells the story of Hazel and her quest to save her mother, who is swept down river by floodwaters caused by a hurricane. From there ,she’s set on the path of a weaver, and comes face to face with various critters and ghosts from the legends of the south.
From there on it’s a pretty standard character action & platforming game. You explore beautiful environments, double jump and wall run over pits and swamps, fight generic bad guys, rinse and repeat.
Where the game excels is its overall look. The design work and presentation are really well done. Seeing all the various creatures of yore in a partial stop motion style was cool, especially seeing how they weave them into the story and the overall lore of the town. It’s also nice they took the time to include all of the south, evoking Louisiana swamps, Texas prairie, and Appalachian forests, even if not all of them are land, it’s nice to see them represented.
The problem is that South of Midnight rarely excels at anything. The platforming is fine, the combat is fine, the story is fine, even the presentation starts to wane as it transitions from swamps and flooded towns to generic fantasy styled forest.
The story stands out, especially when it brings up some of the darker parts of the south’s history and really embraces its Southern Gothic setting. Hazel has the potential of being a great character, but she never shines on her own, simply falling from one location to the next without much drive of her own.The setting does so much heavy lifting but, it’s still a generic coming of age story with interesting window dressing.
The Final Word
Nothing it does truly elevates itself to the greatness of the Southern Gothic look it’s going for, and in a lot of ways, gets in the way of truly enjoying the beautiful locales that are shown. There are only so many times you can enter a circular combat chamber and fight the same enemies over and over with subpar abilities before it gets droll. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the area outside of that arena is.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
