Disclaimer
The copy of the game used for this review was provided by the publisher at no cost to the reviewer.
Introduction
Ever since I first saw South Of Midnight at an Xbox Showcase event, albeit in its trailer form, I was very interested to see not only what the game was like in general of course, but also what it might mean for accessibility, particularly relevant with Xbox seemingly continuing to push its titles where it can to improve on this front.
Granted this is something that the company have been doing since at least 2017 if not before, but it’s still good to see a dedication to the cause and continued progress towards fully playable titles, albeit more slowly than most gamers without sight would hope.
Keeping a close eye on the game to see what accessibility news might be released, though I unfortunately saw nothing officially published, the first-hand previews I read and discussions I had with individuals who were invited to take part were promising to say the least.
During one such discussion prior to the game’s launch, I was informed that menu narration was available, as well as navigation assist of some kind, amongst other options. This had me very excited indeed, since navigation assist and menu narration are still key features missing from most games that can, if implemented correctly, make titles much more accessible without the need for any sighted assistance.
Of course, I had to remain cautiously optimistic as, even with the best of intensions, features don’t always work out to be as viable as might be hoped or end up being as complete as teams want, but I definitely was intrigued to see how this all panned out.
With this game’s folklore narrative from a part of the world that I have yet to visit drawing me in, thanks to a review code, let’s see just how much I can get out of this game without any assistance whatsoever.
First Boot
Launching the game for the first time, I was very pleased to see that UI narration was indeed available on the initial setup screen, lending credence to what I’d heard in the preview discussions. However, it’s worth noting that said initial setup screen appeared after logos and an intro, neither of which unfortunately had any audio description.
I did discover the narration’s existence via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) rather than a spoken prompt, but thankfully it’s the first option in the menu, so pressing A would activate it if you didn’t have access to that additional workaround.
Once I’d enabled narration and got over the extremely distorted speech, I was very pleased to be able to see the variety of options I could adjust, even though not all of these would help me directly.
Some of these that are of note for gamers without sight are this game’s aforementioned navigation assistance (called the Guiding Strand), as well as target locking functionality and combat accessibility haptics, amongst others, though a frustrating element of navigating this UI was that every single item had the word “option” and its position in the list spoken (i.e. “option 1 of 9, start game”, in that order).
Though some people might appreciate this information and it can be useful to track where you are in a list or oddly structured menu, most of the time, without being able to turn it off, it only serves to be a hindrance to more fluid navigation. This is particularly apparent in the 60+ item accessibility menu, duplicating options from across the various other settings screens, but this isn’t the only game to have the issue of positions being listed getting in the way of smoother menu navigation.
With settings adjusted as best as I could figure out at the time, I started the game, opting for a balanced combat experience, given I enjoy that as an aspect of the titles I play, with or without sighted assistance.
The Game Itself
Having confirmed my difficulty, I was greeted by a brilliantly atmospheric narrated opening, including some fantastic music and sound design to go along with it. Sadly, once I gained control, that’s where the issues began to appear.
The Multiple Interaction Problem
An interesting issue, when utilising any kind of navigation assist, is the question of “just how do I make sure people can find multiple objectives?” That is, sadly, to my knowledge at least, a problem that hasn’t been effectively solved yet, at least not by mainstream titles.
Audiogames have been utilising multiple audio cues for a good while (think back to games like Super Egg Hunt, where you’d have numerous eggs on the screen at once all beeping at you. That’s not an approach that is viable for every game or that should be taken as the only way to do things, particularly as it can lead to player overload and confusion as to what is a progression item and what isn’t, though that latter element could be solved with different specific cues.
In terms of mainstream efforts, The Last Of Us has been known to have multiple orders in which to complete objectives or visit locations, with the games opting just, for lack of a better term, to railroad you through in a particular order each time when using the golden path-style of navigation assist available in Part I and Part II Remastered.
This approach, unfortunately, does not give you a choice as to whether you want to go through certain missable locations or if you want to find, say, all the parts first and then a workbench, thus leading to a suboptimal experience of a different kind, even if you are technically able to access all the content.
In South Of Midnight, the very first room you enter actually has 3 interaction prompts that you have to collect in order to progress the story, as well as achieving some worldbuilding in the process.
Unfortunately, even though the Guiding Strand does lead you around the room in a fashion, it does tend to get rather confused as to where you want to go and not actually lead you to the points you need.
After all, there is no way for you to actually tell it which interaction point you want to hit, thereby giving it no frame of reference for your next sub-objective.
The Guiding Strand
The Guiding Strand (hereafter shortened to the GS) is an interesting concept. First of all, it’s important to note that it isn’t, technically, supposed to be available until later in the game’s story.
However, the developers have, of course, made it possible to access this feature from the very beginning of the game, thereby making it theoretically possible to progress without assistance, even though, spoiler alert, that doesn’t turn out to be the case.
The GS has a mode where the camera will automatically orient to where you need to go, though this requires deactivating then reactivating it with a press of the right stick in each time, making for a double press in total.
There is also, much like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, a mode where you can just follow the audio beacon that plays to represent the GS, though this I found to be rather more complicated than expected.
Though the GS does work in principle, this early stumbling block of multiple objectives left me confused and, it must be said, rather frustrated, as it meant that in turn I couldn’t even leave the first room, at least not without great difficulty or luck.
At this point, I resolved to get sighted assistance to double check what was going on, hence how I corroborated the multiple interactions confusing the navigation system and managed to progress through the game.
With Sighted Assistance
On a second attempt so that my sighted co-pilot could see everything play out first-hand, once I’d managed to get through the multiple interaction prompts, and progress the story a little more, the game seemed to stick to having one prompt per objective which made things less frustrating to work with over all.
That being said though, there was another aspect that did appear shortly afterwards: Traversal.
Traversal
Traversal cues in video games are thankfully becoming more commonplace, with titles like Diablo IV introducing a cue for them in a relatively recent update. However, even titles like Spider-Man 2 do not utilise audio for elements of their traversal, instead opting for a spoken prompt starting with the buttons first rather than the action, making things more convoluted than they otherwise might be.
Unfortunately, South Of Midnight does neither of these things, instead making you have to guess what to do to progress. This is partly caused by the lack of narrated tutorials to indicate how to achieve certain traversal manoeuvres, even something as simple as jumping and partly due to a lack of audio cues for these elements as well to indicate when you are required to perform them to proceed.
Having narration for tutorials that tells you what buttons to press and how these elements are meant to work is crucial in getting a seamless gameplay experience without the need for assistance of any kind, with the same being said for audio cues being needed for navigation and other interactions. Granted, certain tutorials for combat that you see later are narrated, but it’s unusual when a game only seems to get parts of the narration working at points.
You could technically guess, via the GS’s pitch change (it is a solid tone rather than a sound that disappears after a while) whether you had to jump or not, but this is very much a case of trial and error in my experience, thus facilitating the need for further sighted assistance.
Having not even reached combat yet, I was kind of surprised to see how much traversal and platforming I’d have to do to get into a fight, though the story and atmosphere, including well-placed 5.1 audio and haptics definitely kept me immersed and interested to see more.
More Assistance
Eventually, I got to a tutorial for hangs and, much like jumping, there was no audio cue to indicate where to jump to in any situation. Indeed you could potentially guess where to move, but this would result, more often than not, in deaths galore and frustration on my part.
Even sections where you had to run across platforms felt unwieldy, as you had to keep re-enabling the GS to orient yourself correctly, as moving both sticks at once proved to make things feel more complicated than necessary given it is a reactive system with no look-ahead functionality.
Specifically what I mean by this is the system isn’t anticipating when you need to turn, only moving precisely when it needs to. this, in turn, means that you have to first know a turn is coming and react in time to get around it without falling into the void.
Interestingly, with the audio mix I had set up, there seemed to be pretty much zero feedback for jumps or successful hangs, meaning that even if I had guessed correctly, the slow but steady progress I was making was down to luck, not skill or understanding of my environment.
At the next tutorial juncture, we had to drop down, once again with no cue or narration for said instruction. Funnily enough, my sighted co-pilot got confused a little further on, as the GS (which was being used as an additional visual reference point) didn’t in fact point to the next progression trigger after a running section, meaning technically we were both stuck, if briefly.
Generally speaking, all you’d realistically need for these kinds of sections are prompts for run, jump and hang,, with running being a moving prompt that would give you enough time to react to turns as well and hang prompts panning in the direction you need to jump towards. Of course this would have to be adjusted in terms of how it works on a game-by-game basis and the types of sound used, amongst other elements, but it would be a good start for most.
Though interact prompts do have an audio cue, and a small haptic as well, strangely enough, the final interact prompt before the next cutscene didn’t narrate for some strange reason, thus also meaning that I had no idea what it was for or that it existed, nor did its cue play.
The first tutorial that narrated after this slight issue was for the guiding strand, which we’ve been using this whole time, as previously mentioned. It’s good to be able to utilise the feature to get to this point, as there have been instances historically of navigation-centric mechanics being locked behind story progression (Ghost Of Tsushima’s Guiding Wind for example).
With this game’s rather supernatural tendencies, eventually I was of course put into what can only really be described as a dream sequence. During said sequence, there was a cue that indicated when apparitions had disappeared and I could progress, demonstrating the viability of accessibility by design through audio. This was, I reckon, an unintended audio extra that just so happened to help me, not an element intended to help me get through this sequence on my own as part of accessibility features, for example.
Even during these sequences, I had to jump though and, with lacking cues for that particular element, amongst others, this would be pretty much impossible without luck or sighted assistance, my sighted co-pilot stated.
When moving without the GS’s audio cue, I realised that though the sound for it was useful, it was also loud enough that it made it hard to hear things underneath it. Having a more fitting sound might’ve actually solved this problem, as well as a mix that allows for the sound to stand out in all ambiences, whether dynamically soft or loud, rather than having to readjust the volume for the beacon or its pitch every time.
Eventually, after more interact prompts that weren’t narrating, unusually, as well as another instance of multiple prompts causing confusion for the GS, we finally got to a second chapter, with the narrator giving us the exposition we needed.
Combat
Finally, a short while after beginning chapter 2, I got into a fight, something I’d been curious to try first-hand ever since I saw the game.
The first thing I always look for in a combat experience is whether there are audio cues for regular attacks, something that is usually lacking even in terms of audio design in general, save for games like Star Wars Jedi Survivor, where you can hear the attacker swinging their weapon through the air before it connects in the majority of cases.
Sadly, South Of Midnight’s regular attacks are not cued at all, meaning that you have to be very lucky when dodging.
Given perfect dodges are a core mechanic of the game, this is frustrating, as it then reduces the agency of gamers without sight and eliminates the ability to win based on skill as opposed to luck. As I summarised it in my very rough notes for this section originally, “you’d just have to mash at what you thought was the right time and hope you were successful”.
Given you’ll take damage with the above strategy, you might be pleased to know there are healing items available. However, as you might also expect, there are no cues for them, so you’d be lucky to find them in the first place, they also don’t narrate their prompts either.
Later, you’re introduced to Unstoppable attacks, much like many other combat-focused experiences. Amazingly, these Unstoppable attacks have a cue albeit a soft ping rather than a louder, more clear indicator (as it sounds similar to the target lock cue).
I’ll be up front and say that, even with my hours of combat experience in other titles, I died… a lot here, though it was only to regular attacks. I eventually relented and turned the difficulty down which admittedly helped, but I would’ve liked the challenge of the higher speed of combat experience myself, which would be possible to have happen with just a few extra cues.
Though you have the option to retry or restart outside of combat visually, what’s narrated on the death screen after a fight isn’t accurate in comparison to the text labels. For instance, narration might say continue instead of restart during combat. Having narration and text match up makes for a more polished experience, as well as providing parity to gamers who might still be able to see but use menu narration for clarity for instance.
Unravelling, a mechanic that allows you to replenish some health, does actually have a sound cue, though it is seemingly designed into the enemy audio rather than a specific general cue. If an enemy sounds like it might be dead, lock on (indicated by another soft ping cue), run in and hold Y. If successful, you should hear an audio animation indicating as such and feel a haptic to go with it.
Once I figured out this mechanic, I was pleased to be able to do that part myself, though how well this all works in future battles is yet to be seen.
With those two fights done, I considered that my stopping point at least for now, since it would take a large amount of assistance to get through other traversal sections of the game, as much as I wanted to see more of it myself.
Sound, Acting and Music
I’ve referenced it previously in this review, but thought I’d talk about this aspect in a little more detail here: The sound of South Of Midnight is very well-constructed. The ambience in particular, when run through a 5.1 surround receiver, fills up the space you’re playing in and brings to life the raging storm of the opening act, alongside voice acting that allows the characters personalities to shine through… and that’s just talking about the ones we meet during the first couple of chapters, sometimes only seen for mere moments.
It’s not just good on a 5.1 receiver though, I even noticed the quality and attention to detail when playing on headphones, something that isn’t always true when you move from one listening experience to another.
On top of this already solid base, the use of reverb allows the spaces to feel more realistic, as opposed to having no echo at all, though it wouldn’t be enough to allow you to navigate or visualise the environments without audio description of course.
This soundscape is complimented by what some might call an unusual soundtrack, blending a small-scale guitar-focused band sound with the aesthetics of an orchestra, weaving in the folkloric references that are, really, the foundation of the game’s story. Whilst I hadn’t got to the boss fights during my playthrough, what I heard even during the opening narration matched the vibe of the game’s world pretty much perfectly, meaning that when I go to listen to either just the ambience or the music, the other will likely be audible in my head with relatively little prompting, the mark of a well-crafted auditory tapestry.
All in all, this is a great audio experience and one that brings to life the world it creates with a surprising level of vivid detail, even when you can’t see it to begin with.
Summary
Pros
- Menu narration available from first-time setup screen
- Audio including sound, acting and music are solid, making for an immersive experience
- Navigation assistance is included and designed to be accessible without sight
- Variety of accessibility options included
Cons
- Menu narration is distorted and arguably reads elements in the incorrect order
- No key audio cues for traversal or combat elements
- Navigation assist gets confused during areas with multiple objectives
Conclusions
South Of Midnight, whilst showing promise for potential improvements and having a compelling and interesting narrative, is held back by the existing feature implementations not covering the full needs of the potential audience who could use them to play unaided if they were to be fully completed.
As we’ve seen so many times before across the board, what accessibility does exist is potentially great, but lacks in key areas (i.e. the missing traversal audio cues), with these deficiencies making the game, by my reckoning at least, impossible to complete without assistance or luck.
I do hope the developers are allowed and able to bring the necessary accessibility additions to this title, as I really think they might have an accessible platformer for gamers without sight on their hands, something that in this day and age is sorely needed, not just as a bar to set and surpass for other developers, but as an expansion to existing genres for those looking for a new title to dive into.
I look forward to seeing more of this game in future and, if any updates do occur, I’ll attempt to update this review to recognise that. However, for now, I’d recommend this game only to those who have the luxury of sighted assistance, though it is admittedly agonisingly closer than most to being fully playable without it.