South of Midnight feels distinctly Alice in Wonderland. I notice this in its finer details as I play the game's third chapter. A bug-eyed frog stares up at me from beneath a metal construction sheet, croaking angrily before tipping itself into the creek with a soft plop. Winged insects zip overhead, each big enough to hold in both hands. Inexplicably large, unclimbable pieces of fruit – peaches or apples, perhaps – almost dwarf the abandoned stilt houses nearby. All the while, I can't decide whether I'm too small or the world is too big.
That feeling of being lost in a fantastical space where size and scale have ever-shifting values seems integral to South of Midnight – even after playing just one chapter. "When we were playing with different ideas, we thought, 'oh, maybe it should feel like you’re looking at a miniature'," explains Compulsion Games' art director Whitney Clayton. "We decided against that, because it took away from the immersion. So the feeling is more that you’re inside the miniature, and how would that feel?"
Curiouser and curiouser
South of Midnight wears its aesthetic roots proudly. As a reverse engineered 3D-modelled game, shaped by the principles of handcrafted miniatures in stop motion animation, it crystallizes Compulsion's ethos to offer "rich, imaginative worlds where narrative gameplay and the world are this cohesive thematic experience." Sure enough, when I'm not maneuvering Hazel past thorny brambles, fighting ghostly Haints, or leapfrogging over numerous deadly bodies of water, I'm marvelling at how beautifully South of Midnight comes together – and how much it feels like a living, breathing diorama.
The swampy bayou environs of Prospero constitute the first in a series of playable locations – each evoking a "really specific mood" to "reflect the type of story being told in that moment" – across South of Midnight's 24-hour timeframe. With the third chapter occurring earlier on in Hazel's journey, the incorporated themes of decaying Americana, real world history, and the eccentricities of folkloric tradition flow together seamlessly. An example of this is the charming Catfish, who is to Hazel what the Cheshire Cat is to Lewis Carroll's Alice. The polite, Southern-drawling, shark-sized creature is clutched tight in the hand of a giant tree man when we first meet, and it's only through freeing Catfish that Hazel learns how to navigate the world around her.
As I diligently head to the "bottle tree" to retrieve a spirit-catching vessel, I don't question a moment of its magic. That's because South of Midnight operates at a strange intersection between story and history. It looks, feels, and plays like a high fantasy game, yet littered throughout are hints of its more sobering narrative beats.
Hazel's combat maneuvers are a synthesis of theme and gameplay.
Examining the eviction notices pinned on condemned houses in the bayou reveals the cruelties of each family's fate, showing the devastating impact of corporate land redevelopment on real-world local communities. Learning more about old man Rhubarb's brother, Benjy, reveals a painful story of brotherly betrayal, and only through confronting this pain does Hazel free them both from it. The story's visual presentation informs our experience of it, something Clayton describes as "very curated, which was a complete reaction to having a game that was procedural before [in We Happy Few]. So this crafted, curated theme, we went really full on in South of Midnight for that."
That super involved level of detail reflects another facet of why South of Midnight feels like Compulsion's take on Wonderland: its combat. Armed with her Weaver-magicked spindle and hooks (with a distaff to come in later), Hazel's combat maneuvers are a synthesis of theme and gameplay. The rapid hack n' slashing reminds me of Alice's vorpal blade in American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns, as do the danger-fraught, traversal puzzle-shaped detours that Hazel can explore in each location.
I've only played a single chapter, but these detours already feel like necessary parts of the South of Midnight's form and function, giving way to almost childlike wonder as you explore its world of surprises. "It's really dense in its narration," hints gameplay director Jasmin Roy. "There's always a little something that keeps going, that kind of builds every chapter, builds every region." That little something, in my mind, is the trifecta between "world, narrative, and gameplay" that Compulsion wants to keep front and center – and so far, I think it's succeeding.
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