As we enter our third year of partnership with Compulsion Games, we’re proud to say that we’ve contributed significant work to the recently released South of Midnight!
We started our engagement with Compulsion as an art and tech vegetation-focused mandate but quickly evolved our relationship into a fully integrated co-development collaboration, spanning across level art, asset production, VFX, and lighting, as well as dedicated engineering services across features.
Planting a Stylized World
Creating all the vegetation in an environment-rich game such as South of Midnight required thousands of hours of research, iteration, technical troubleshooting and optimized implementation, which resulted in a lush and wonderous world that was grounded in the motifs of the Deep South while embracing the more mystical, stylistic undertones of the game's creation direction.
World Building
Building South of Midnight’s haunted bayous, abandoned plantations and moonlit crossroads fused storytelling with technical rigor. Our Level Art team logged thousands of hours iterating, set‑dressing and optimizing streaming budgets to craft environments that felt vast but were flawlessly performant. By planting narrative breadcrumbs in the scenery and sculpting effective sight lines that helped to guide the player, we delivered a world that honored Deep‑South folklore while ensuring seamless player flow.
Establishing Mood
Capturing the otherworldly, Southern‑gothic atmosphere required us to engineer lighting that is as evocative as it is performant. From firefly‑flickered forests, through New Orleans inspired cities to moon‑soaked mangrove swamps, our artists poured heart and soul into both visual and technical solutions that felt right at home with the gameplay beats. The result is a cinematic palette that heightens tension, silhouettes critical traversal cues, and underscores the mystical undertones at the heart of Compulsion’s creative vision.
Creating Magic
We continued to expand beyond our level art mandate, with our VFX team being presented with the opportunity to take over the gameplay VFX for not only to and boss fights, but also Hazel – the main protagonist - and her complete range of special abilities.
Our teams worked in tandem with Compulsion to concept, craft, iterate, and test to find the perfect balance between art direction, readability, wow-factor, and gameplay design.
“On April 8, we finally released South of Midnight for the world to enjoy. Bringing Hazel’s Southern Gothic journey to life was no small task — from the unique art style and stop-motion animation to the smallest artistic details, everything had to come together to create a beautiful, modern folktale experience.
From the start of our collaboration, the Onyx team blended effortlessly with our dev team at Compulsion. They were true collaborators — not just support, but partners in every sense. Together, we crafted immersive environments, elegant and accessible UI and HUD, atmospheric lighting, expressive VFX, and the polish and optimization needed to ensure a smooth experience on every platform.
Working with Onyx wasn’t just about outsourcing support — it truly felt like extending our own team. Across time zones and cultures, they brought passion, skill, and heart to South of Midnight as true members of our team.”
Anouk Bachman
Producer, South of Midnight