Compulsion Games has been quietly sharing small updates on South of Midnight on their Twitter account. While they seem content to reveal this world they have created at a leisurely pace, they have already shared a lot of interesting little insights.
In their latest tweet, Compulsion Games revealed that they had hired two nature sound recordists to get the most organic ambients, animal and insect noises for their game straight from the source: the Southern wilderness.
Now, you may not have even realized that a job like this existed, but this isn’t some casual hobby. Th work that nature sound recordists do places them in the crossroads between audio engineers and naturalists. One of the two recordists they hired, Andy Martin, enthusiastically shared his feelings about working for this game. He posted this on Facebook:
“Recording for #SouthofMidnight is still one of my favorite projects ever. Camping and recording surrounded by swamp on all sides was one of the best listening experiences I ever had. Thanks, Compulsion Games!”
In another recent tweet, Compulsion revealed that they hired metal vocalists to make the sounds produced by their eerie spirit like monsters, the haints. The Monster Factory, the company who got these rock singers for them, had this to say about the experience:
“We are thrilled to show you a little behind-the-scene of this amazing project. A monstruous thank you to all the wonderful people at CompulsionGames. We can’t wait to play South of Midnight!”
You may have thought this sounded like a strange idea, but the video game industry has been doing this sort of thing for a while now. You can check out this small clip of Faith No More’s Mike Patton voicing 2k Games’ interpretation of Marc Silvestri’s symbiote-like monstrosity, The Darkness, like only he could.
In fact, since sharing the key concept art for South Of Midnight at the start of September, Compulsion has been sharing concept art of even more haints. One can note that in spite of the variety of their designs, the haints are characterized by their root like tendrils, and the fiery embers that seem to burn in their centers. They absolutely look like they’re made of trees and shurbs, reshaped into different forms, and animated by something living, and yet ominous.
While Compulsion has shown creative ambition in their previous projects, it would be fair to say that they haven’t quite been able to cross over to realize those ideas to critical and commercial success. What they’re showing us now with South of Midnight makes us think that could change.
Because behind the unique premise and the layers of lore around it, Compulsion is now working on an easier game design to work around, in a conventional 3D action game, with a little magic user stuff thrown in.
And in that regard, South of Midnight looks to evoke comparisons to the likes of God of War, Kingdom Hearts, or Bayonetta. And we can absolutely see Hazel becoming as popular as the likes of Kratos, Sora, and Cereza, if her game can deliver on all of this hype and promise.
South of Midnight will be released in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
