South of Midnight Receives New Update

Summary

South of Midnight’s new update focuses on fixing boss fight bugs, cutscene glitches, and other issues.
The game features stop-motion-style animation and has garnered praise for its art style and storytelling.
Compulsion Games will likely release more patches to address remaining bugs.

Xbox’s southern gothic action adventure South of Midnight has received a new update that mainly focuses on boss fight bugs, cutscene performance, and other issues. South of Midnight is the latest title from Compulsion Games and the studio’s first game release as part of Xbox Game Studios. The Canadian studio was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 just months before the full 1.0 release of its sophomore game, We Happy Few.

A hard pivot from Compulsion Games’ previous two projects, South of Midnight is a third-person action adventure game that takes place in the American south and is heavily infused with mythic folklore from the region. Perhaps the game’s most intriguing characteristic is its stop-motion-style art direction, which uses a reduced frame rate on character animations to make them look like they’re moving in stop-motion. While South of Midnight is quite a linear experience and its combat is fairly simple, the game has garnered praise for its art style, music, and storytelling, earning a respectable 77 on Metacritic.

South of Midnight Soundtrack Needle Drop

South of Midnight Features Some of the Best Needle Drops in Gaming

Music plays a vital role in South of Midnight, so it’s only natural that the game features some of the best needle drops in recent memory.

Just over a week since South of Midnight‘s release, Compulsion Games has put out a new update for the game, Patch 1.2.0. The meat of the patch deals with fixing up issues some players have encountered with two of the game’s big boss fights, Two-Toed Tom in Chapter 5 and Huggin’ Molly in Chapter 9. For the former, the bug that made the boss disappear if players fell into the water has been ironed out, along with another glitch that had players get stuck in place in a certain spot of the boss arena. As for Huggin’ Molly, the bottles players use to damage her will now spawn properly in phase 3 of the fight.

South of Midnight‘s storytelling is a major part of the experience and, as such, the game’s cutscenes are extremely important. The new patch resolves issues related to one of Huggin’ Molly’s misaligned eyeballs, Hazel’s missing facial expressions, and one Chapter 6 cutscene where Hazel appeared to be flickering. As far as game crashes go, one particularly noteworthy crash that occurred between chapters 11 and 12 has been resolved, but only on Xbox Series S. It seems players on Xbox Series X and PC may still be at risk of running into the crash as they progress toward that particular point in the game.

Considering this is Compulsion’s first ever third-person action adventure game, it’s impressive how technically polished it was at launch a week ago, especially with South of Midnight‘s stop-motion animation style. The team likely has another couple of patches planned to roll out in the coming weeks and months, so fans should stay tuned regarding any future bug-squashing updates.

South of Midnight Patch 1.2.0 Notes

Quality of Life

In response to community feedback, added new menu options for mouse and camera smoothing to improve control customization.

Tech

Fixed a crash when transitioning from chapter 11 to chapter 12 (Xbox Series S only).
Targeted performance improvements in gameplay and cutscenes.
Level of detail: Adjusted render distances on target objects to reduce popping (Kudzu, small plants, animals, etc.).

Gameplay

Resolved an issue where bottles during the Huggin’ Molly boss fight in Chapter 9 failed to spawn correctly during Phase 3.
Fixed an issue where the player would not receive damage from dropping yarn after being hit by it while standing on a jar during the chapter 9 Huggin’ Molly boss fight.
Resolved backtracking issue in Chapter 3 that previously blocked player progression (invisible wall at first wall run).
Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck when standing near the Two-Toed Tom dive-out area during the chapter 5 boss fight.
Fixed an issue where Two-Toed Tom would not reemerge during the Chapter 5 boss fight if the player fell into the water.
Fixed issue where some mushrooms appeared missing when playing on the lowest graphics settings in chapter 10.
Fixed various collision blockers in chapter 2, 10 and 11 where Hazel could navigate out of bounds or get stuck.
Fixed a rare issue where Weave would fail to hit a Haint during combat but still trigger the full cooldown, even though the ability did not successfully activate.
Addressed an issue where Haints would occasionally disappear during combat.
Fixed an issue where the first Crouton upgrade (Crouton Detonation) was missing its intended functionality.
Fixed an issue where using the pull ability on a rock projectile during the camera zoom-in would deactivate the weavable platform.
Fixed an issue where the 14/19 readable could not be collected when approaching the weavable platform from the left side
Fixed an issue where Hazel would enter a T-pose when grappling immediately after unsummoning the puppet.
Fixed an issue where VFX would remain attached to Hazel’s feet when entering or exiting Wall runs quickly.

Lighting

Adjusted the HDR color balance in chapter 5 to address oversaturation and brightness on lower end HDR screens.
Fixed an issue where the fade to white in HDR would instead fade to a washed-out grey.
Fixed incorrect lighting issues on systems using Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPUs.

Menu, settings and User Interface

The default key to back out of menus has been changed from ‘Backspace’ to ‘Tab’.
Fixed an issue where pressing ‘Esc’ on keyboard or the ‘Menu’ button on Xbox controller failed to save remapped controls or custom difficulty settings when exiting menus.
Ensured that keys are displayed in English consistently across all languages.
Resolved an issue where the “Applying changes in progress” message for graphics settings was untranslated.
Fixed an issue where the input display would default to “Keyboard” on Xbox if no controller was detected when launching the game.
Fixed an issue where unassigned controls would automatically remain unassigned after quitting the remapping menu and confirming to exit, requiring the player to remap them again.
Fixed an issue on Xbox where enabling HDR would cause pop-ups to appear without a background, making them harder to read.

Cinematics

Fixed a visual issue where one of Molly’s eyelids was misaligned.
Improved the transition from the wound Restore cinematic to catfish Outro removing camera and Hazel glitch.
Resolved a bug where Hazel’s facial expressions were missing and Hazel was flickering during the Chapter 6 Cherie Tree cutscene.
Fixed an issue during the Lacey Argument cutscene where Hazel was incorrectly holding two right shoes.

Narrative & Localization

Fixed multiple localization issues across various languages, including missing subtitles, cut-off subtitles, and incorrect subtitle languages.
Fixed various typos and grammar issues across the lore tab, readables, and other in-game text.

Audio