Since time began, kids have been taught by tales of creatures, learning of life through fear. In parables that are horrific when pulled apart, kids learn not to bite their nails, not to stray off the beaten path, not to go into the woods at night. South of Midnight is a game inspired by these tales, wielding ever-stranger creatures to tell stories about its American South setting, to reveal human truths, and to help protagonist Hazel embrace her destiny.
“Hazel, in this game, is in the space between childhood and adulthood,” Zaire Lanier, Writer and Narrative Director at Compulsion Games told GamesHub. “In that space, you start learning the way the world really is. The things you think you know as a kid, you start viewing in a different light … I think any kind of folk tale has that – you eventually change your perspective.”
While the game’s creatures do exist in Hazel’s reality, they also operate as metaphor – representative of shedding the beliefs and fears of childhood, and understanding empathy and pain. Hazel is in a transitional period as the game begins, learning to become independence, embracing her history and culture. To do so, she must first shed the layers of her childhood, and emerge with more mature insight.
The universality of folklore
For the Compulsion Games team, it was the rich folklore of the South, and particularly monstrous fables told to children, that guided the game’s early development.
“People have always told those kind of stories,” Lanier said. “I think they’re cautionary tales spun in a way to spark a child’s imagination. A woman snatching you in the middle of the night, as a kid, would feel a lot scarier than a bear … [because it’s] very familiar. A woman, to a kid, is usually a safe place.”
“I think a lot of fairy tales take something that’s familiar and safe, and makes it horrifying.”
Per Jasmin Roy, Game Director at Compulsion Games, that cultures across the world have shared monster stories as cautionary tales for centuries, speaks to the universality of this folklore. “It’s not all universal, but people can still relate to it,” Roy said. “It’s very interesting to see how specific people might have different myths, these different mythologies … but I think it’s something both new, and that people can relate to, knowing there’s other versions of these particular stories.”
In setting the game in the American South, the team aimed to weave unique threads from the region’s rich mythology, telling tales that have been shared as parable for centuries – but with authenticity and real experience at the forefront. As noted by Lanier, the Compulsion Games team began the game’s development process with ample research, as well as insight from creative director David Sears, who grew up in the region, making up stories about wild creatures.
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“At one point, he decided to pitch the idea to us to do this kind of love story, love letter to the South, and that really crystallised the idea of, ‘okay, we’re going to have these mythical creatures … we’re going to place them within these regions that we’re going to go and explore.’ So we made them the centrepiece.”
Beyond the imaginings of Sears, Compulsion Games wanted to ground their stories in real-life mythology, and so, it turned focus to talking to local folks from the South, on the ground, getting new and fresh perspectives on myths, many of which have entered the modern pop culture lexicon. Storyteller Donna Washington visited the studio to share her stories. Cultural consultants were employed to ensure stories represented were authentic and respectful. And several of the Compulsion Games team were also able to share, firsthand, their own experiences of living in the South, or the experiences of their family.
As Lanier noted, it was in this oral storytelling process that Compulsion Games found their inspiration. While many of the modern myths of the South are well-known, there is no “definitive book” to explain them. Rather, much of the region’s mythology is handed down in tall tales and folklore that weaves it way through generations, and so South of Midnight contributes to this legacy.
What tales do South of Midnight‘s creatures tell?
The very concept of adding to this mythos also notably informed the aesthetic direction of the game, with it largely resembling a storybook in design, paired with a stop motion style similar to puppetry – one of the oldest forms of storytelling in the world.
According to Lanier and Roy, the game was intentionally designed to be like a living maquette, so that its stories may be delivered like a parable, for an audience that might meet the game on its level.
“There was always this idea of taking maquettes, little dioramas and model and miniature things. We wanted to make them look like they could be hand-crafted, with the visuals and the stop motion animation,” Roy said.
In that way, while players explore a world inspired by folklore, they’re playing through a book that might resemble one from their childhood, sparking memories, and that long-dormant fear of strange creatures that live in the woods.
As for deciding which creatures to represent, and how to hang the story around these living parables, the Compulsion Games team focussed on particular themes in their creature creation. Relatable themes, designed to call back to the experience of living as a child.
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One of the creatures in the game, Two-Toed Tom, a giant albino alligator who did actually once exist, represents hunger in all its many forms. As a parable, he is a warning against mistreating animals, with his lack of food leading to him chewing off his own toes, and going on to grow enormous in size.
To depict the darkness of his backstory, the narrative team worked together with the game’s artistic team to create a model riddled with scars and rough patches – “He’s carrying lots of different scars and wounds on him – things like that were really a back and forth between the two departments, as we broke the story around the character.”
Two-Toed Tom also helped the team to discover the idea of creatures being “landmarks” in their version of the American South, with them being rooted firmly as part of the landscape, and products of it.
Focussing on these creatures as representing concepts and places allowed for new perspectives and interpretations of traditional mythology. In the game, Hazel will eventually stumble across a Rougarou – one of the more well-known mythical creatures of the game – but it’s not represented as a werewolf, per usual. Rather, it’s more owl-like and visually unique.
As Lanier explained, we don’t know what these creatures actually looked like, because many of them were born of tall tales, and changed by decades of iteration and interpretation. In experimenting with belief and that perspective, the South of Midnight team wants to invite players to learn more about them, to question their judgements and what they see, to discover something new.
“We wanted to still put our own twist on some of the [creatures] because you’re going to see all of these things through the eyes of what they mean within South of Midnight,” Roy said. “We take inspiration from [the real-life lore] and it’s our interpretation, to make it all fit together in a cohesive experience. It’s an artistic interpretation of these myths.”
The finishing touches
From these touchpoints, the next most important thing was nailing the tone of the game through its voice work, hiring voice actors with the physicality and tone required to bring creatures to life, and to ensure South of Midnight felt authentic and accurate in its depiction of the South.
“They’d read and we’d say, ‘Oh, we like this person. We like their physicality. This person, their tone of voice.'” Lanier explained. “Then we started narrowing down from there, having people who have roots in the South, or grew up in the South, was also helpful, especially for accents.”
It was also important for these actors to nail the deeper emotions of the game, with their performances providing texture to raw tales of pain, growth, and ascension. As revealed, the Compulsion Games team worked closely with Ahmed Best (Star Wars, Fallout 76) to nail down the game’s acting direction, with his insights allowing the team to refine the game’s overarching tone.
With this focus, it allowed the team to elevate the warmth and companionship of the Catfish (as seen in our early game preview), to amp up the creeping horror and dread of creatures like Huggin’ Molly, and to play with perception in each new meeting.
These elements – story, meaning, visuals, and voice work – were all essential to creating creatures that carried with them deeper meanings, and a real richness. Even in the absence of a childhood filled with terrifying tales, these creatures speak to a deeper fear, and one that resonates regardless of personal background. You don’t need to have grown up in the American South to see how the idea of a hungry alligator rattlings bones, across the ages. You don’t need to be told why a spider-woman with wandering hands might frighten children.
South of Midnight is about generational, very human fears, brought to life with a careful artistic vision. And not only meeting these fears, but overcoming them with the only tools that matter: kindness, compassion, and empathy.
In representing the transition from childhood to adulthood, Compulsion Games aims to remind everyone that growing up isn’t about hardening yourself. It’s about learning to let new feelings in, and understanding perspectives you might never have considered.
It’s about learning to recognise who the real monsters are.
South of Midnight is set to launch for Xbox Series X/S and PC on 8 April 2025.
