The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
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Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24722455/SouthofMidnight_Shack_1920x1080.jpg)
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
The spooky, blues-inflected South of Midnight was one of the extra arresting trailers revealed at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, but additionally one of the extra mysterious, and simply misplaced amid noisier fare just like the reemergence of Fable, the reveal of Star Wars Outlaws, and the gargantuan Starfield info-dump. What is it about? How will it play? What’s its pedigree? And how will it navigate the tough waters of its American Deep South setting?
Some, if not all, of these questions are answered by an official developer interview on Xbox Wire. The brief model: It’s a magical realist occult journey from the makers of We Happy Few that may discover the folklore, music, and rural environments of a fictionalized South — however the studio, Compulsion Games, isn’t saying a lot about the way it will play but.
When is South of Midnight’s launch date, and is it an Xbox exclusive?
No launch date has been introduced. Microsoft dated a number of video games for 2024 at its showcase, however South of Midnight wasn’t one of them — like Fable, it might be even additional off. As an Xbox Game Studios launch, it’s coming to Windows PC and Xbox Series X, Game Pass, and Steam.
Who’s making South of Midnight?
This is the simple half. Compulsion Games is a Canadian studio primarily based in Montreal based by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost. As an indie, it made the beautiful however slender 2013 puzzle-platformer Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, a dystopian, first-person, survival-horror sport with roguelike components set in a twisted Sixties England. Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft and turned a first-party Xbox Game Studios staff in 2018.
Compulsion’s web site says it goals to make “hallucinatory adventures in worlds strange but provocatively familiar,” with wealthy storylines and world-building and a “handcrafted” really feel. Its video games are constructed round robust artwork kinds and notable literary and pop-cultural references (George Orwell and The Prisoner for We Happy Few; William Faulkner, Night of the Hunter, and the blues of Robert Johnson for South of Midnight).
There’s additionally some hands-on involvement from Microsoft: Narrative producer and artistic specialist James Lewis is moonlighting from his day job as head of ID@Xbox’s Developer Acceleration Program to work on the sport. Lewis, who is Black, is serving to make sure the Canadian developer is dealing with the setting and characters sensitively.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
What’s it about?
In a magical model of the trendy, rural South, protagonist Hazel is on a quest to restore a damaged world by taking over legendary creatures drawn from Southern folklore. Creative director David Sears, who spent his childhood within the area, mentioned it’s “loosely inspired by me tramping around forgotten farms and abandoned places in Mississippi.”
Hazel is a Weaver, who can use magic for fight and traversal. Her Weaving magic permits her to “take the strands that make up the universe and weave or spin them into useful forms for the player to use,” Sears says. The results are “full of fractal geometry expressed as knitting and doilies — everything is themed after textiles.” Hazel is highly effective and wisecracking, however may even have a flawed, human aspect influenced by her household and the world she grew up in: “She has many of the same issues as real people have,” Sears says.
As properly because the creatures from folklore — just like the monster that seems vaguely within the trailer (an Altamaha-ha), or Haints (evil spirits that worry the colour blue) — Hazel will encounter extra ambivalent figures like Shakin’ Bones, the wizened, singing large from the trailer. He’s an immortal Archon, partly impressed by Charon, the ferry boatman of Greek mythology, and partly by the bluesman Johnson, who, legend has it, did a take care of the satan on the crossroads. It’s not clear if he’s on Hazel’s aspect or not, and Sears hints that there could also be threats on this world apart from the monsters Hazel faces.
How will South of Midnight play?
Sears and Lewis give away little or no about this, however we do know some fundamentals from an earlier interview given earlier than the sport was revealed. In a 2021 French-language interview with Xbox Squad (as reported by VGC), Compulsion’s PR and neighborhood developer Naila Hadjas mentioned the staff was engaged on third-person narrative single-player sport. It gained’t have We Happy Few’s roguelike components and, in contrast to that sport, it gained’t debut in early entry. “The next game is a story, we know where we are going,” she mentioned.
Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios
How is Compulsion dealing with a sport a couple of Black lady set within the South?
In the Xbox Wire interview, Sears seems proud that South of Midnight will characteristic a setting and lead character which are underrepresented in gaming, however conscious of the pitfalls of doing so from the skin. That’s the place Lewis, who works with builders from marginalized teams, is available in. Compulsion has additionally sought different outdoors assist, together with inner Microsoft assets like Xbox’s Black Employee Resource Group and exterior consultants. But, as Lewis says, illustration at Compulsion itself, notably on the writing staff, is essential: “The approach to this had to start by having just proper representation on the team, ensuring that we had Black women and women of colour on our narrative team is key for understanding and writing Hazel’s voice.”
Will the sport take care of the bitter, racist historical past (and current) of the South? Lewis makes it sound as if it will likely be acknowledged, nevertheless it’s not the primary thrust of the story.
“You don’t actually have to be from that area to attest that the American South has a history that makes it difficult to use as a setting without its difficult past, which we can still feel the impact of today.” But, he says, “Hazel’s job is not to fix racism or the South’s troubled history. Those challenges are not fair to her. Her job is to be seen as a person coming of age in a scary and beautiful world. Making her an authentic person that people like my wife, my daughter, my mother — who all look like Hazel — will hopefully recognise and relate to.”
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