South of Midnight has been designed with a single, guiding vision, one where thought and care has been put into every decision. In this game, story suffuses everything – combat, boss design, art, even music. Ask the team about any gameplay element, and they won't just tell you why it's fun, they'll tell you the narrative reasoning behind it. Key to all of this is that Hazel's story is about repairing a world, and the individuals caught up in its newly-darkened corners.

It might sound like a heady message, but the way this ties into the game is fundamental – and it's what makes South of Midnight so unique. With such a clear goal in mind, it means that a game in a very familiar genre can feel wholly unfamiliar.

Take South of Midnight's world, for a start. Compulsion describes the game as "wide-linear," a series of distinct chapters, with a set beginning and end, but with opportunities to explore along the way:

Each new region will come with its own biome, a reflection of the South's wildly varied landscapes. All of those biomes are inspired by real-world locations – Sears won't go into detail about the later game yet. However, the magical realist approach allows Compulsion to play with expectation as you travel through its world.

Locations will feel deeply rooted in what we know of the real world – in fact, to help create this section of the game, the developers took a trip to a real Mississippi ghost town, itself infested with alligators (only one of them braved the trek across amphibian territory to get into an abandoned church and take reference shots). But as we travel, we'll see how these areas have become overtaken by the game's mythical creatures, bringing twisted change with them.

Of course, most folktales need antagonists and in the trailer we meet one of them. Two-Toed Tom is based on real-life campfire tales of ancient, giant, seemingly unkillable alligators, and he will – as Clayton puts it – "haunt" this chapter in Hazel's tale. What we've seen are the very edges of his hunting grounds, but Tom will repeatedly reappear as you explore his region, eventually leading us to a showdown. It allows not just for a "boss fight" that effectively spans a whole section of the game, but also allows the team to turn each creature into a full-blown character, rather than a simple mechanism for conflict.

The idea, like everything else here, doesn't seem to be that Hazel will kill the creatures standing in her way, more that she'll be curing them, removing the hurt that turned them into monsters in the first place. And in perhaps the most starkly unexpected part of the trailer, we even hear the game's music reflecting the story that made Tom what he is.

‘Weaving Hazel’s Journey: A South of Midnight Documentary’ features brand-new gameplay and a behind-the-scenes look at the music, inspiration, and development of Compulsion Games’ upcoming action-adventure game. 

The documentary also features the actors who brought the characters to life, including: Performance and Voice Director, Ahmed Best (Star Wars Episodes I-III, The Mandalorian, Fallout 76); Actress for Hazel, Adriyan Rae (Chicago Fire, Vagrant Queen, Atlanta); and Motion Capture and Stunt Actress for Hazel, Nona Parker Johnson (Fear the Walking Dead, Mayor of Kingstown).

Weaving Hazel’s Journey also features commentary from the teams that have shaped South of Midnight’s music, gameplay and narrative – including Art Director Whitney Clayton on the game’s unique art style, Composer Olivier Derivière, whose rich soundtrack has taken inspiration from multiple musical genres of the Deep South, and the various creative teams who have collaborated to achieve the look and feel of the game.

Compulsion Games has also announced The Art & Music of South of Midnight, developed in collaboration with Dutch design house and publisher Cook and Becker. The box set highlights the unmistakable art style of the game and includes a160-page art book with gold foil and gilded edges and a two-LP vinyl with the full soundtrack of the game presented in a beautiful gatefold – all with original concept art and designs from the production of South of Midnight.  

To further expand upon hero Hazel’s world, the set includes a gorgeous South of Midnight comic book by award-winning artist Rob Guillory, an artwork on metal and a Big Game Tours fridge magnet featuring an alligator and an airboat.

The box set does not include a copy of the game.

The box set is available for pre-order from Cook & Becker starting today. 

Composed by Olivier Deriviere (A Plague Tale: Requiem, Get Even), and with lyrics by Sears and the writing team, each song will be woven throughout the Kingdoms, growing in complexity and systemically responding to your actions, until full-blown lyrics begin telling the stories of the creatures you're trying to evade and, eventually, cure. It's rare to hear voiced songs in games – but it's rarer to hear them originally composed to support the narrative throughout a whole game.

Of course, setting and music are one thing, but combat and exploration are often more coldly mechanical pieces of game design – how do you ensure you're still storytelling when you're hammering buttons to take down a Haint or a boss?

Compulsion have utilised a few tricks here. For a start, it's in how Hazel fights and gets around. Everything she can do is powered by her Weaving, and this links your actions intrinsically with that core goal of fixing what's broken. To that end, it comes with a very neat bit of game design – while we see traversal powers (gliding using a Weaver sailcloth) and combat powers (like Unravelling enemies), Hazel will also gain a set of spells that show off Weaving's utility. During the trailer, we can see three abilities available the top-left of the screen, and they come with some mechanical ingenuity:

The powers we can see are Weave, Push, and Pull: Weave can be used to fix objects in place to help traversal, but will also bind enemies; Push and Pull can be used to move objects in the world to help solve puzzles, but also affect combat dynamics, letting you control enemy placement to an extent. You'll unlock more as you go, all with this multifarious functionality. Turning your spells into something that can be used in any situation is a neat metaphor for how Hazel's powers aren't simply about destruction or survival.

The result is a game where the look is as powerful a part of the storytelling as the characters themselves – and the almost uncanny effect of how South of Midnight moves is a part of this, too. Last year's trailer introduced us to Compulsion's maquette-like designs, and stop-motion inspired animation, but seeing it as a working game is proof that the story trailer wasn't just for show.

While the team has tweaked exactly how pronounced the effect is between cinematics, exploration, and combat, one of South of Midnight's biggest differentiators from other games is in how committed the team has been to that look:

And here's the most important point – Compulsion aren't doing things differently simply to be different. There's a guiding principle behind all this: Hazel's story, the reflection of the Deep South, the real-life research that's gone into it, and the myriad ways that storytelling leaks into every bit of design. This team believes in what they're making, and has put thought into, well, everything.

South of Midnight will be released on Xbox Series X|S and PC in in 2025 – and play with Xbox Game Pass on day one.