Using the Guillermo del Toro model of ‘one for them, one for me’, The Midnight Walk is a title I’ve been salivating over for some time and couldn’t wait for its release. A chance encounter on the PS5 revealed that the game was out (on my Steam wishlist and hadn’t recently checked), so I immediately bought it.
Stop-motion is my thing, and in fear of this being massively biased what with my tastes and having bought the game, it is a masterpiece. Initially, one’s gaze will be on the spectacular world that MoonHood has created made of clay, cardboard and Cimmerian proportions. As a pitch, you could say it’s Tim Burton meets Papetura meets The Brothers Quay – more the latter, and two of my favourite filmmakers.
As The Burnt One, you enter The Midnight Walk’s gloomy 3D world from a first-person perspective (a VR option is also available but not tested) where the land has been expunged of light and warmth, but surprisingly, not heart. After befriending a fire-wielding ceramic sprite named Potboy, your task is to light the way, for others, completing a series of self-contained folk tales en route.
The Midnight Walk Review (PS5)
From the viewpoint, you can’t see your character other than their branch-like arms as they point to Potboy to light candles or hide from icy winds. He has the free will to do as he pleases, so aside from shielding from being distinguished, he’ll more or less run ahead like he’s just downed a family pack of Skittles and been bouncing on Mum and Dad’s kingsize. It’s very cute to watch, and fortunately, his antics don’t get you seen.
Seen by what exactly? The Midnight Walk is part casual puzzle, mostly exploration, and some stealth. There are no health gauges or cluttered HUDs, instead, if you’re caught by one of the… things in the shadows, you’ll respawn at a checkpoint. The Burnt One can squat down and hide behind obstacles, climb in wardrobes, or get Potboy to light candles as a distraction.
Admittedly, while these sections are far from rage-inducing, repeating these set pieces while figuring out how to do it can be mildly irritating. Thankfully, that’s the worst thing about The Midnight Walk. The other aspect that verges on lightly spoiling this beautifully crafted world is the exploration. There’s not that much to do besides look for a variety of collectables, displayed for your pleasure in a Baba Yaga-like moving house named… Housey. It’s easy to miss items but encourages you to explore as much of the shadows as feasibly possible.
I’m Walkin’ Here
Each scene is comparable to reading a manga. By that, I mean each panel is a work of art that you often overlook the artist’s strokes, shading, perspectives and… mise-en-scene. Instead, you progress through the story, every once in a while stopping to get lost in its awe. The Midnight Walk is similar in that absolutely everything in this world serves a purpose but you might bypass the stars made out of scrap paper, the intricate contours of a bodiless NPC, or nuanced animations of a bunch of flowers as you’re under the spell of a bonfire-bound raconteur, or having your heartstrings manipulated by the cathartic soundtrack.
I don’t like any medium that induces melancholy, and several times, the music did have me walk that path rather than the twilight one of the game. The fundamental nature of the game was ok to begin with, but once getting stuck into one of the five tales, the storytelling climbed over the clay to take the crown. Each story teaches some fundamental moral values we could all learn from, without it being preachy.
These stories are voiced beautifully throughout from the narrator to the Labyrinth-like NPCs, to the Tom Waits-type lore rhetoric stored inside collectable shells that wouldn’t be out of place in One Piece. The voice actors were perfectly cast, including the creators, who knocked it out of the park. I was so invested from the Molgrim onwards that the music, while still manipulating emotions, was far more positively impactful, and I’d implore you to play The Midnight Walk with headphones on.
Listen, Y’ Hear?
The majority of games that encourage headphone usage tend to be for shooters, sound-driven titles like Blind Drive, or predominantly horror. My repeated mantra is I love horror films, but games scare me a bit, so not in a hurry to fill my pants. That said, The Midnight Walk isn’t scary, despite its grotesque depictions, yet spatial sound is an advantage not for the obvious stealth sections, but for exploration.
One of the mechanics includes closing your eyes to seemingly be surrounded by red blood cells and then opening a hidden door. Wherever there are prominently lit eyes, holding down L1 momentarily will reveal a path, dismiss an enemy, or manipulate them for a puzzle element or two. Other times the sound will direct you to a point of interest where your eyes aren’t the solution.
Ultimately, playing The Midnight Walk with headphones was the icing on the cake and the closest thing to donning a VR headset to being completely shut off to the outside world. Nothing else mattered besides completing the walk, and regrettably, the inevitable ending where a decision would have to be made on how to conclude the story. Without a manual save game, this became meaningful and required complete and utter investment in the consequences.
The Midnight Walk Review Summary
From start to finish, The Midnight Walk was beautiful. While those first beats were around the stop-motion aesthetic, it was the story that shone through. For me, this was the strongest element, but without the clay medium, sublime voice talent, of immersive world-building, it would have been incomplete. An absolute masterpiece that’s still playing on the heartstrings.
