South of Midnight feels distinctly Alice in Wonderland. I notice this in its finer details as I play the game's third chapter. A bug-eyed frog stares up at me from beneath a metal construction sheet, croaking angrily before tipping itself into the creek with a soft plop. Winged insects zip overhead, each big enough to hold in both hands. Inexplicably large, unclimbable pieces of fruit – peaches or apples, perhaps – almost dwarf the abandoned stilt houses nearby. All the while, I can't decide whether I'm too small or the world is too big.
That feeling of being lost in a fantastical space where size and scale have ever-shifting values seems integral to South of Midnight – even after playing just one chapter. "When we were playing with different ideas, we thought, 'oh, maybe it should feel like you’re looking at a miniature'," explains Compulsion Games' art director Whitney Clayton. "We decided against that, because it took away from the immersion. So the feeling is more that you’re inside the miniature, and how would that feel?"
