South Of Midnight’s Studio Head Reveals Hard Worked Research Put Into The Setting

Originally posted on Total Apex Gaming | By Carly Giddens | Last updated May 4, 2025 12:41 AM ET

South of Midnight is quite the interesting nugget of a game that you might have missed hearing about when it was released on April 8th of this year. It is much better done than one may think, looking at the game makers, which happens to be the creators of We Happy Few, to mention a very complex game with mixed reactions. I do need to mention how nice it is to see that they haven’t given up. This time, they learned a few happy lessons and threw themselves back in the ring headfirst, creating something their studio always had: a captivating story.

To Really Understand a Setting…

You have to be there yourself. South of Midnight is set in the world of the deep South, and they wanted to bring it to life in the most accurate way that they could, telling Game Rant that they went down on two different research trips down to Louisiana and Appalachia to understand both the folklore and the environment surrounding the game. They spoke to experts about the magical history to give them the depth they have in the game and even hired artists well-versed in the music of the region to work on the soundtrack with them.

When You Put In The Work…

Image of South of Midnight artwork, courtesy of Compulsion Games.

It really shows! The same reason your teacher told you to write down your math equation calculations on paper instead of in your head applies here too, it’s just really nice to see any game developer put in the extra effort to care about reaching the audience: both in the element of trying to respect the culture that they are portraying and trying to show other’s outside of the culture what that little bit of the world looks like.

Both of these things were something that studio head Guillaume Provost, the spokesperson talking about the game, stated were big drives in South of Midnight. They wanted you, the player, to understand what it was like in your soul to get bitten by misquotes, on and all that soul-searching stuff.

Overall

South of Midnight has really taken off since its release, already gaining over 1 million players in such a short span. Reading through the reviews shows you why that is- people are loving the life they see in this game, from the art style to the story and the people they get to meet within the folds of the book. The depth of the characters is consistently mentioned.

Effort pays off, and when you push yourself so deep into something that you do the work that Compulsion is talking about here? It grows in the threading chapters you are sewing together. It’s nice to see the company come into its own with this kind of game, and I hope it keeps working out for them!

This article first appeared on Total Apex Gaming and was syndicated with permission.

More must-reads: