South of Midnight

South of Midnight is a fairy tale from the American South unlike anything usually seen in games. After a devastating storm, the heroine Hazel sets out to find her mother and discovers along the way that she belongs to the so-called Weavers — people able to see and mend the threads the world is woven from. The landscape of swamps, flooded houses and abandoned little towns is full of creatures out of local folklore, driven mad by unprocessed grief and old wrongs, and Hazel must either unravel them or help them find peace. The gameplay combines brisk platforming — swinging along thread-ropes, double jumps, pulling yourself forward — with combat in which enemies are first weakened and then literally unwoven.

The strongest element is the visual style. Character and creature animation deliberately skips frames, so the whole game looks like a stop-motion puppet film, and this trick lends even calm scenes an unsettled, dreamlike undertone. Add to that landscapes full of moss, cypress trees and rusting metal, mist over the water, and lighting that borrows its colors from Southern sunsets. The music rests on blues, gospel and folk ballads; every major enemy has its own song telling its story, and it's precisely these songs that make the game a long-remembered experience.

On Xbox Series X|S the game runs smoothly and also offers a smoother-framerate mode, with the stylization letting it look great without extreme hardware demands. Reviews highlighted the atmosphere, the music and the sensitive handling of themes of loss and family memory, while criticism leaned toward the simplicity of combat and the linearity of the levels. As a mid-length, well-told adventure with a distinctive cultural grounding, though, South of Midnight ranks among the most personal titles Xbox Game Studios has released. The chapters are also short and play well over an evening, so the game never starts to feel like a chore. Worth noting too is the narrative framing device, with a character commenting on events like a folk storyteller, which holds the whole thing together like a collection of connected legends.