Black folks are loud. We laugh loud, we love loud, we protest loud. But when we really want to show our approval, we get quiet first. When we laugh at something funny, like really laugh, it sounds like a thin wheeze before sound bursts forth like a storm. And within seconds of starting South of Midnight, as I walked around the protagonist Hazel’s home and seeing a piece of art that was an obvious and deliberate homage to the painter Annie Lee’s Blue Monday, I wordlessly put my Steam Deck down and took a quiet lap around my living room before I started shouting.
South of Midnight is the latest title from Compulsion Games, a Canadian studio best known for making We Happy Few. It follows Hazel, a young woman who must rescue her mother after a hurricane sweeps their home away. Along her journey, she comes into her powers as a Weaver, or guardians who can see the strands that connect all life in what’s known as the Grand Tapestry and can repair it when those strands get knotted by pain and trauma.
The game is an action platformer. Hazel progresses by using her Weaver abilities to heal the blighted landscape and defeat enemies called haints – a Southern term used to describe ghosts or monsters. She’s aided on her quest by Crouton, her childhood stuffed toy come to life by powerful magic. He can take over enemies’ bodies, cause them to fight on Hazel’s side, and can squeeze into places she’s too big to reach.
I love when a piece of media talks to me as a Black person. A TV show, cartoon, or even a video game will have tiny visual references or phrases that are like a secret code. I see or hear them and know a Black person left this for me to find. What made me holler about South of Midnight was that its writers went for the deep cuts. They put in the kind of stuff you only know about if at least three of your four grandparents were American Black. Back in the day, everyone on both sides of my family had Annie Lee artwork in the house. If it wasn’t Blue Monday, it was Sixty Pounds — which my mother had hanging above the window in our kitchen.
What made me holler about South of Midnight was that its writers went for the deep cuts.
That kind of acknowledgement is everywhere in the game. It’s in the way Hazel and her mother, Lacey, speak to each other, the words they use, and their intonation. Hazel mutters something disrespectful, and her mother immediately calls her out: “I thought you was grown.” It’s in the way Catfish, the magical and overly large catfish who guides Hazel on her quest, reminds me of my two very country uncles. Earlier this year when I spoke to Ahmed Best, the voice and motion capture director for the game, he talked about how he wanted to ensure every aspect came across as authentic — right down to the way folks stood. I saw that come through in the way Hazel fans herself just so to keep the Mississippi heat at bay. Instead of standing straight up, she tilts her head to the side as she waves her hand the exact same way Memphis-born aunties do.
The details were so small, but they accumulated in my heart like the waters behind a levee. Every time I discovered something new — like noticing one of the game’s chapter titles referenced Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God — the emotion would burst forth as a flood of tears.
And it’s not just the narrative that pays homage to Black and Southern tradition and culture; the gameplay does, too. Instead of the much (and unfairly) maligned yellow paint used to denote a climbable surface, South of Midnight uses a very specific shade of blue — the color Black people in the South would use to paint their porches to keep evil spirits away. There was a moment when I saw blue butterflies hovering over a cliff surrounded by water that kills Hazel if she touches it. Knowing the game uses blue to show you where you can safely go, I took a leap of faith over the edge and found a secret power-up. The game spoke to me using the language of my ancestors, and I heard it. Once again, I hollered.
As much as South of Midnight made me yell, its combat did make me groan a little bit. Every combat encounter follows the same extremely basic formula. Enemies show up in an arena, you kill them, heal the wound causing the enemies to appear, repeat ad nauseam with particular emphasis on the nausea part. It’s so formulaic that combat feels vestigial, like it was put there as an afterthought to give players something else to do. Hazel’s abilities don’t feel particularly fun or interesting to use, and, honestly, the game doesn’t even need combat at all. The storytelling is so strong that South of Midnight would be just as compelling as a purely narrative experience with some light platforming action.
Honestly, the game doesn’t even need combat at all
In a lot of cases, in order for Black media to get widespread attention or critical acclaim, it must be centered on luridly depicting trauma. The opposite isn’t all that great either, wherein a piece of Black media overcorrects and completely refuses to acknowledge traumatic realities that inform our existence. South of Midnight deftly straddles those two schools of thought in a pointed way that I’ve never seen before.
South of Midnight sees me. It gets me. Its creators wanted to craft a love letter to a culture not often depicted in video games, and they did exactly that. At a time when my government is trying to do everything in its power to erase my people, their history, and their contributions to the US, I cannot overstate the power that lies in being seen — especially coming from a place like video games, which is often violently hostile if it bothers to acknowledge folks like me at all.
This game came out right on time, right in the moment when a narrative like this was needed the most. South of Midnight is a loving and worshipful praise song of the culture and people it depicts that made it hard for me to stay quiet for long.
South of Midnight is out now on Xbox, Xbox Game Pass, and Windows PC.
