Fire is one of the oldest and most transformative phenomena in studied history. It’s a force that’s shaped our world and countless others, given us warmth and energy and power, some might even suggest our world was birthed in it. But for as much as it gives, it also indiscriminately takes away, making it something to be feared as much as embraced. It’s shaped the course of humanity too, whether it’s fuelling new ages or simply inspiring us to stop and share tales in the night, before its soothing light.
It’s in that particular space that The Midnight Walk finds its spark. Even as it weaves through a series of fables and allegories in a world of clay and flame, it’s in the quiet of the night, the allure of a moonlit road and the sharing of stories with new and old friends that makes it a walk to remember.
Just watch me
Embodying someone known only as The Burnt One, The Midnight Walk tasks players with the care of Potboy, a spritely little clay creature carrying a sacred fire in his head. Your pilgrimage with Potboy, and eventually a wandering abode known appropriately as Housey, takes you along the titular and seemingly sacred Midnight Walk through to Moon Mountain, but as with all good road yarns, this one is mostly about the journey and only very loosely about the destination. To that end, it’s a linear and patiently measured amble through a handful of distinct chapters – each bringing with it a new set of memorable locations, characters and stories.
It’s all presented in first-person, and in either virtual reality or a more traditional flatscreen style of play, so while your interactions with its world are relatively simplistic, it’s more about the atmosphere. MoonHood (made up of the creative forces behind banger games like Fe and Lost in Random) has painstakingly modelled, scanned and animated every piece of the game from clay, so even when you’re being asked to light a candle or cower in a wardrobe for the nth time, you’ll be too preoccupied with marvelling at the space around you to mind the rote “walking sim” tendencies.
Going to my Shame Cupboard for more fuel
Throughout this long night’s journey, you’ll come into a few invaluable tools to aid you on your way, be it as simple as boxes of matches or a flame-spitting “matchlock,” but the game’s first gifts to you, the Burnt One, are your very eyes and ears. However you might choose to play, to be given these as gifts is to be reminded of your privilege in the harsh world you now inhabit, where keen senses are essential but not guaranteed. Should you happen to be playing VR, it’s also a genius way to ground you in your limited connection to what’s about to unfold around you.
It’s incredibly effective, too, because The Midnight Walk’s clay world is a sight to behold in virtual reality. It’s as close as you could possibly come to stepping into something like Coraline, Mad God, 1988’s Alice or (if you must) The Nightmare Before Christmas. For all of the effort that developers continue to put into producing increasingly realistic VR simulations, there’s just nothing like being immersed and enveloped in Capital A Art. The stories are almost unilaterally morbid and grim, making their depiction in wretched, twisted forms of soot and soil the stuff of nightmares and classical fairy tales.
Keeping warm in front of all my shame
The effect of all of this isn’t necessarily lessened when playing without a VR headset, and if you’re keen to truly peep the intricacies and craftsmanship in razor-sharp detail it’s the way to go, but the simplicity of the VR-friendly gameplay becomes more obvious. There isn’t much to it beyond lighting candles, occasionally pointing Potboy at switches, hiding from stalking beasties and finding collectibles, though that’s just about enough to sustain the five-ish hour excursion. The allure of what dark tale or spooky scary figure could be around the next bend is a plenty potent excuse to keep on walking.
Final Thoughts
This world that MoonHood has crafted captures the way those darkly comic stop-motion pieces invite us to a curious and frankly frightening place beyond reckoning, and ask us to simply accept what we’re seeing with little context or history. It’s art that has negative space, and it’s in that negative space that the imagination plays. We’re invited to observe strange rituals and customs, to break bread with the grotesque and the macabre, and to live by the light out of respect for the dark.
Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher
- MoonHood
- Fast Travel Games
- PS5, PC
- May 8, 2025
