The Midnight Walk

I am a big fan of stop-motion animation, from the big movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas or Wallace and Gromit, to the shorts you can find online. The amount of work it takes to create something with this animation style, even compared to others, is painstaking and methodical and makes you appreciate the piece even more for it, in my opinion at least. So you can imagine my curiosity when I first saw the announcement for The Midnight Walk, a game whose style is entirely based around Claymation, and looks like something directly out of the mind of Tim Burton. The Midnight Walk was developed by MoonHood, published by Fast Travel Games, and was released on 8^th May 2025 for PlayStation 5 and Windows as a standard and VR release. 

Story

The sun has died out, and thus has plunged the world into darkness. Within this darkness, terrifying monsters thrive, bringing fear and death to those still surviving with an insatiable hunger for fire. You play as The Burnt One, who, after being born… I think, runs into a small creature called Potboy, someone who has the ability to spout fire from his pot-shaped head. The two quickly form a companionship and journey down the Midnight Walk in order to reach Moon Mountain and reignite the sun.

The game doesn’t have much of an ongoing story aside from that, instead it’s more episodic, with The Burnt One, Potboy, and a sentient house called Housy travelling to different locations and sorting out a problem there in the hopes of moving further down the walk. For what it is, the story really works. Each location is fascinating to learn about, and the lore is wonderfully cryptic, giving you enough to draw you further into the world, but leaving out enough to get you theorising and keep you guessing. It’s a simple story overall, but it’s still very good. 

Presentation

I think it’s safe to say that the looks and aesthetic of The Midnight Walk is the main draw to the game. The developers used actual clay models for the characters and 3D scanned them into the game, and you can tell. Everything, from the character design to the environments and all the set pieces look and feel like they were taken directly out of a Tim Burton project. The game looks hauntingly twisted, from the wonkiness and downtrodden looks of towns and forests, to the uncanny and disturbing designs of the characters – even those meant to be friendly have some eeriness to them. The team took full advantage of the clay look, the game has, crafting a world that doesn’t just work in Claymation, but can only work in Claymation.

During cutscenes, the game will be animated very choppily, further exemplifying the Claymation style the game is going for. This isn’t a constant though, as the game will shift to smoother animation during gameplay, mostly during the more repetitive and commonly seen animations, like run cycles or you lighting a candle. I understand that it’s for a smoother gameplay experience, but I would have liked it if the game kept with the choppy animation all the time. 

The voice acting is pretty great. Everyone’s voices perfectly fit the characters, from Chris Guerrero’s soft southern twang for The Soulfish, to Pauline Constantine giving Moonbird a sinister whisper, to the small grunts and gurgles that Potboy spouts. A lot of the voice acting adds to the eerie yet cozy feel that the game portrays and I kind of love it.

The music for this game is probably what makes this game feel so cozy. You’re travelling through a dark and creepy world with giant monsters who want to devour your little pot friend, and yet the music is incredibly soothing at almost every turn. There are times where the music will turn sinister, usually while avoiding monsters, but it never gets very loud, having more of a quiet encroaching presence instead of being loud and bombastic. The music is incredibly comforting and I can honestly see myself listening to it when trying to relax or while reading a book, which is something I never thought I’d say about a horror game. 

Puzzles

Most puzzles in this game are solved in one of two ways, by closing your eyes or lighting something on fire. To start with the former, you have to close your eyes a lot for puzzles, each using the mechanic in unique ways. One that the game will teach you early on are the eyes embedded into walls, doors, statues, pretty much anything within the environment. What you have to do with this is simple, face the eye directly until it glows blue and then blink, and afterwards something in the environment will change, oftentimes a new path will reveal itself, or you’ll be teleported to someplace else. As for the other one I really like, you close your eyes and listen out for audio cues, if the sound gets louder then you’re on the right track. This is mostly done to help you find objects like keys or a hidden path forward. I think this mechanic is really interesting and is used in really cool ways. It’s also why I think this game is best played in VR, because it’ll help to immerse the player more as well as unnerve them more than they would just playing it normally. 

Lighting things on fire is probably the most common kind of puzzle you’ll encounter. At numerous points you’ll find a large matchbox containing an infinite supply of matches, which you can then light at said matchbox, though they will go out pretty quickly. Also spread throughout the levels are candles for you to light, sometimes these will just be ways to light your surroundings, or give you another source to light a match with, though they will also need to be lit to open a door and continue forwards. Eventually, you’ll get a gun that will light up and fire matchsticks and can be filled up at the matchboxes. Aiming with it is a bit finicky as you will have to aim above the thing you want to light up instead of directly at it, but it does work, in fact I’d say I would be a bit disappointed if it was easier to aim with it. Potboy is also able to light these torches, in fact it’s one of his main character traits. There will be some that you simply cannot reach, or multiple candles that will have to be lit at the same time, whether by Potboy himself or including your involvement, in which case you will have to instruct him to light them up for you. He can’t always reach them straight away, so you’ll have to help guide him towards the source, mostly by telling him to travel through a few pipes to reach a higher platform – figuring out which pipe to point him towards is a puzzle in itself. 

Looking back at it, the puzzles are really simple, the solutions are easy to figure out and they won’t take you that long to solve. But I think that works in the game’s favour, it can still take you a few minutes to figure out what you need to do and I think they are clever enough that you’re not going to be unsatisfied once you solve them. I found myself enjoying these puzzles quite a bit. 

Monsters

The monsters in this game are like something out of a nightmare. They have some truly demented and off putting design, once again taking full advantage of the Claymation style, and creating horrors that can only work when made out of clay. From the shrivelled form of the Crawlers, to the absolute nightmare fuel that is the Grinners, the monster design is simply sublime.

As to be expected, you can’t fight these monsters, all you’re able to do is run and hide. You do have ways to deal with each of them, and the method will be different depending on who’s pursuing you, like lighting a candle to distract the Crawlers for example, or the Grinners giving you a couple of seconds to run and hide before giving chase. However, sometimes all you can do is hide from them, and there are plenty of hiding places for you to use, from small burrows in the ground to wardrobes. There are small barriers that you can crouch behind to avoid detection, if the monster is on the other side they won’t see you no matter how close they are. 

Collectables

There are a surprisingly large amount of collectables in The Midnight Walk. These aren’t that difficult to find if you’re thorough with your exploring, in fact Potboy will lead you towards the collectable if you stand for long enough. Some of these are found behind small doors in walls, trees, rocks – pretty much anything that looks solid. The more common ones you’ll find are the Shellphones, these are essentially this game’s version of the Audio Diaries from Bioshock, where you’ll be told a small piece of lore from someone in the past, occasionally hinting you on what to do to move forwards. These ones are the easiest to find, as they are often in plain sight along the beaten path and not that difficult to miss.

The rest of the collectables are found in the small cubbyholes I mentioned before, and can be viewed and interacted with when resting inside Housy. There are the Gramophone Discs, which will let you listen to some of the wonderful songs this game has to offer. The Story Pages, film reels that will tell you a story when put through the projector. And finally there are the Clay Figures, small figures of characters and monsters you’ve encountered throughout the game, these are just for examining, but they are fun to look at and will give you greater appreciation for the real life clay models that were made for this game. 

Collectables don’t really do much more for the story or gameplay, they’re just small things for you to interact with and learn more about the world, which I really like. They won’t take that much effort to find if you’re actively looking for them and are fun little extras that I enjoyed getting. 

Flaws

Finally, this game isn’t perfect and there are a couple of minor issues that I have with it. For starters, I played this on my PlayStation 5, not on VR, and I feel like I missed out on a core part of the experience because of that. I still had a good time with it but I can tell that this game was tailor made for VR first and foremost and I feel like I would have gotten way more immersed in the game if I had played it that way. 

Second, there are a number of invisible walls, during gameplay they never got in the way, but there will be times where the game wants you to see Potboy or another NPC do something, and an invisible wall will block your way forwards until you watch the whole thing. It’s like the game is afraid of you missing what Potboy’s doing, which is a fine worry, but forcing me to stop and watch is not the method to do it as it just feels restrictive. I would have much preferred it if the game just let me risk missing the cutscene instead of confining me to that spot. 

The final one is one that didn’t bother me but it may annoy some other people, this is a really short game. From start to end it took me a little under 6 hours to beat and I’ve heard of some people managing to finish it in around 4 hours. Personally, I think that the game is long enough, but there are going to be others that would like it to be at least a little longer. As I said, it’s not an issue for me, but others might not think it’s worth the money. 

Conclusion

In some ways this game is what I expected, but in others it surprised me. I expected the weird world, the horrifying monsters and a charming little story, but I wasn’t expecting to find myself really relaxed during the game. The Dev’s did call this a “Cozy Horror” game, but I was not expecting just how cozy it would be. I found this game to be an absolute delight. The charm and vibes are next level, the creativity is wonderful and it has the perfect blend of creepy and cozy. If you like short and wondrous games that take you through a unique experience, then I think you’ll really like this one. It’s charming, it’s delightful, it has a cute mascot with a pot for a head, what more could you ask for?

8.7/10