South of Midnight: a well-crafted 60fps experience on Xbox Series consoles

Developer Compulsion Games continues its impressive streak of eye-catching, visually creative projects with South of Midnight. Following its work on 2013’s Contrast and 2018’s We Happy Few, this time we pivot to a gothic fantasy setting inspired by American deep south myths. It’s a unique premise, and the third game from the studio to champion an aesthetic of some kind – with South of Midnight’s twist being that it plays out using a stop motion style. To complete the effect, the game puts an arbitrary frame-rate cap in place, most notably in its cutscenes, simulating the staccato motion of an actual animated feature. It’s an Xbox and PC exclusive at present, too – so how do the Series X and Series S versions compare in their delivery of this visual style, and what’s the scope of the PC release’s scalability?

South of Midnight is a single-player, circa 12 hour adventure that fits the bill for a Game Pass release perfectly. Compulsion Games focuses on three core pillars of gameplay here: platforming, combat and physics-based puzzling. Our lead Hazel’s abilities as a spell-caster give us plenty options in control for each, letting us glide through the air, push, pull and apparate scenery into existence, and even snare enemies in battle. In every aspect, this idea of manipulating the world with threads is well realised, with a satisfying flow to movement once her abilities expand on a skill tree. There are higher difficulty settings, but I found it a pleasant ride as-is on the default mode. It’s linear, no question – and there’s even an optional trail to the next objective if a hint is needed – but given the deluge of open-world extravaganzas as of late, it’s refreshing to have a more guided experience for a change.

In terms of its tech, there’s no official line on whether this is using Unreal Engine 4 or 5, but, looking at the PC install directory, there are crashdump files which heavily suggest UE4 as a base. The highlight this time though is South of Midnight’s stop motion animation style. To break this effect down, all cut-scenes run at 30fps on Xbox Series X, Series S and even PC. There’s no way to opt out on any platform, but it’s justified given it forms the basis of the game’s idiosyncratic visual style. Within this 30fps update, certain elements are chopped even down further for effect; facial movements run at 15fps, creating the illusion of face plates being swapped every other frame. Meanwhile, most of Hazel’s body movements run at 30fps, though some other elements – like the creatures roaming the land – appear to move at 15.

All combined, the stop motion effect is convincing in its delivery, creating an otherworldly, off-kilter movement that suits the story well. We’ve seen this technique used in other UE games too, most recently with Hi Fi Rush’s vivid imitation of a Saturday morning cartoon. Likewise, it authentically captures the anime influence on Ark System Works’ Guilty Gear Strive, with pre-fight sequences running at eight, 10 or 15 frames per second – or higher. South of Midnight goes a further step though, by extending this to the controllable gameplay itself in some respects. To be clear, gameplay runs at 60fps – as it should, given the focus on timing-sensitive combat and platforming – and all camera motion conforms to a 60Hz refresh too. Still, you’ll notice Hazel’s running motion and the world’s creatures use a form of decimated animation to lock movements at 30 or 15fps. If you’re not a fan of the result, you can disable the stop motion effect outright in the menus on Xbox and PC, though this toggle will not affect the cutscenes.