It was hard playing a preview of South of Midnight because, 20 minutes in, I just started bawling. The demo for the action-adventure platformer starts at the beginning of chapter three. The protagonist, Hazel, is working her way through a swamp trying to find her mother, who, along with their house, had been washed away in a hurricane. At the same time, she comes to learn her newfound powers as a Weaver â a person who can manipulate the metaphysical strands that connect all life â from the ghostly echoes of an enslaved woman who used her powers to escape to freedom and help others do the same.
With all that weighing on me, I held it together pretty well. But as I went through the double jump tutorial, a choir started singing a hymn in the background and I just lost it. It wasnât that it was an emotional hymn; I didnât even recognize it. But I knew the song was of me and for me even without having heard it before. Thatâs the kind of cultural weight the developers at Xbox studio Compulsion Games have invested in South of Midnight.
The authenticity that oozes from the game was intentionally cultivated. Its story draws upon American Southern Gothic folklore, which itself i …