South of Midnight Gets New Update for June 2025

The latest patch for South of Midnight makes several accessibility repairs and even adds a dog-petting feature. Compulsion Games' South of Midnight was one of Xbox's major first-party game releases earlier this year, alongside the likes of Obsidian's fantasy RPG Avowed and Bethesda's FPS follow-up Doom: The Dark Ages. The game impressed players with its stop-motion-like art style mixed with its American Deep South setting.

Given how long Compulsion Games spent working on South of Midnight and how much the team has bulked up since 2018 with Xbox's support as a first-party studio, many players were pleased with how polished the game turned out to be when it was released in April. There's not much for gamers to complain about in the way of bugs or general polish. Considering the only two games Compulsion had made prior included the puzzle platformer Contrast and a first-person survival game titled We Happy Few, it's impressive to see the studio execute a third-person action adventure game like South of Midnight, unique art style and all, with so few technical hiccups at the finish line.

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With all that said, Compulsion has still been rolling out a few post-launch patches, and the latest one, Update 1.3.0, lets players pet a pair of dogs in the game. Found in Chapter 5, players will now be met with a button prompt to pet both of Beaux's bloodhounds, which players had previously been unable to do. It's a fun addition to South of Midnight, as it's no secret that many gamers who own pets themselves love being able to pet their digital counterparts when exploring video game worlds. This is made even more evident by the CanYouPetTheDog Twitter account, which boasts nearly half a million followers and has acknowledged this new South of Midnight patch.

This South of Midnight patch isn't just about dogs, as a host of accessibility fixes have been added to Compulsion's Deep South romp, most of which have to do with menu narration. The patch also addressed a shadow flickering issue that most commonly appeared during cutscenes, and an issue with the unintended ability to map "jump" and "drop from ledge" controls to the same button has been amended. Lastly, this new South of Midnight patch added in missing subtitles for a late-game musical number at Kooshma's Cabaret.

With how polished South of Midnight already was at release, it's hard to imagine there's too much else for Compulsion Games to fix or add. The only thing on many gamers' minds is the question of when the game might come to PlayStation users. With almost every other major first-party Xbox game being released on PlayStation this year, including Forza Horizon 5 and the upcoming Gears of War: Reloaded remaster especially, it seems inevitable that South of Midnight could follow suit in due time.

South of Midnight Update 1.3.0 (June 16, 2025)

Lighting

Fixed light/shadow flickering in cutscenes on Low, Medium, and High Shadow Settings

Menu and User Interface

Fixed an error where the 'jump' and 'drop from ledge' actions could be mapped to the same input

Gameplay

Added 'Pet the Dog' mechanic in Chapter 5

Accessibility

Various Menu Narration text readout fixes:

Fixed Chapter Replay option not being narrated
Fixed Menu Narration reading popup button options with their full coding names
Fixed the first boot auto configurer pop-up not being read by the Menu Narration system
Improved the readout text for the 'Quit' confirmation popup
Fixed Menu Narration reading order to read the item name before number
Accessibility color options are now read out by their proper color names

Added subtitles for Kooshma's Cabaret show (Roux's song)

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