Video Game / South of Midnight

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South of Midnight is a Dark Fantasy Action-Adventure game developed by Compulsion Games and published by Xbox Game Studios.

Nineteen year-old Hazel Flood lives with her mother Lacey in Prospero, somewhere in the American South, implied by character dialect to likely be Louisiana. While the two are preparing for an incoming hurricane, Hazel leaves home for a short while after a heated argument with her mother, only for her to see their home washed away, with her mother still inside.

Now lost, Hazel discovers that she is a Weaver, a practitioner of magic who can see and manipulate magical strands, and embarks on a personal journey through a magic realm to find her mother... and, in the process, herself.

The game was released on April 8th, 2025^note with Premium edition early access starting from April 4 for the Xbox Series X|S and PC, and is scheduled to be released for the Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 in March 31st, 2026.

Previews: Reveal Trailer, Gameplay Trailer, Story Trailer, Stop Motion Trailer, Launch Trailer

Tropes:

• 11th-Hour Costume Change: In Chapter 12, right before Hazel enters Kooshma's cabaret to meet Roux, he tells her that she'll need a change of outfit; when she enters, her outfit changes to a black halter top with a scart tied over her trousers, along with paint on her arms, purple eyeliner, and her hair in a braided bun. She even voices her appreciation.
  Hazel: Yeah... not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Jolene's father would threaten her with his starved crocodile Tom. It is why she sicced Tom on him.
  • Itchy's father is shown to have repeatedly beat him. Molly heard him talking about it in church, causing an accident which killed his father.
  • Huggin' Molly is revealed to be a benevolent figure who takes children away from their abusive parents.
  • Bunny showed blatant Parental Favoritism towards her daughter Cherie, tasking Trey with watching over her and angrily chastising him for letting her dress get dirty. She never forgave him for Cherie's accidental death and is intent on only bringing Cherie back. The fact that Huggin' Molly took Trey away implies that his treatment by his mother was indeed pretty bad.
• Accidental Murder: Hazel's father, Trey, accidentally drowned his sister Cherie when he was a child while trying to clean her dress.
• Advertised Extra: Shakin' Bones is seen several times in trailers, particularly in the game's reveal trailer, but is not encountered in the game till near the end, where he takes Hazel to Koochma's lair.
• Affably Evil: Roux is the right hand man of Kooshma and the main supplier of its victims, but he's very jovial and polite. He even gives Hazel the means to save her mother in return for Bunny, a deal everyone benefits from and he never reneges on.
• Affectionate Nickname: Lacey calls Hazel "Bug", sometimes "Little Bug" or "Baby Bug".
• All Myths Are True: Hazel's quest leads her to interact with several entities that she thought were only fairy tales.
  Hazel: Wait, is Huggin' Molly real?
  Catfish: All the stories are real, darlin'.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: During some sections of the game, Hazel sends her doll Crouton inside hollows and small entrances that only he can access.
• At the Crossroads: Where Hazel finds Roux's caravan and the portal to Kooshma's dream world.
• The Atoner: Jolene. She killed her own father by releasing Two-Toed Tom, and carried that guilt for years. In another moment, she decides to dedicate the rest of her life in charitable endeavors and "let the good lord decide".
• Badass Adorable: Crouton is a plump living doll which accompanies Hazel. At the start of chapter 10, he takes one of her hooks to defend her unconscious body.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Preacher Jolene's father kept an alligator chained up and starved so he could threaten to feed people to him. Jolene eventually freed the gator, who ate his captor and kept eating until he became Two-Toed Tom.
• Belly of the Boss: Two-Toed Tom swallows Hazel, allowing her to cleanse the corrupted hunger inside it.
• Big Bad: Bunny Flood, whose scheming endangers mythical creatures around the bayou and is predominantly responsible for the Stigma infesting the region. While Hazel is periodically dogged by Kooshma, the King of Nightmares, he's just an instinctual force compared to Bunny's active malevolence.
• Big Fancy House: The Flood family owns a huge mansion in town and a slightly more modest vacation house in the bayou.
• Bigger on the Inside: In chapter 12, Hazel pays a visit to Roux's travelling wagon. When she enters, it looks like a two story mansion.
• Brick Joke: While making her way through the pig farm Hazel sees a pig floating on a piece of debris, but it attracts Two-Toed Tom and gets eaten to Hazel's horror, later when Hazel is swallowed by Tom she finds the pig still alive floating on the piece of debris atop Tom's stomach acid, and following his boss fight, it, along with her, is eventually vomited up by the gargantuan beast.
• Bullying the Disabled: Benjy, a childlike man with an unspecified mental or developmental disability, was relentlessly bullied by the people around him for being obviously different and was eventually killed by his own brother. He is the first person Hazel has to heal with her Weaver powers.
• Cain and Abel: Rhubarb and his mentally handicapped brother Benjy. Rhubarb, growing tired of moving around and caring for his brother, lead him into a hollow tree and nailed him inside, killing him.
• Central Theme: Pains of the past negatively influencing the present.
• Chase Scene: After Hazel clears the dark Stigma with the magic bottle, she is transported to a large area where she is relentlessly chased by Kooshma.
• The Chosen One: Weavers are chosen by the land to mend tears and tangles in the Grand Tapestry. The last Weaver of Prospero was a woman named Mahalia who used her powers to free slaves, while Hazel is chosen in the present day.
• Colossal Croc: There's Two-Toed Tom, a legendary island sized alligator living in the bayous in Louisiana. In addition to the island on his back, he's covered in harpoons and is missing part of his upper jaw after an attempt to kill him with explosives failed. Hazel has to fight him in Chapter 5.
• Colossus Climb: Cleansing the mythic tree involves scaling its giant moving limbs to get to the corruption at its canopy, although at least in this case the boss is actively cooperating with you.
• Company Town: Laurent was born in one called Milltown. His mother died because the doctor would only take real money but his father was paid in company scrip, leading to their family falling apart. When Laurent confronted the company owner, the owner shot his father, and the stress of losing both parents caused Laurent to transform into a Rougarou.
• Content Warnings: South of Midnight is the first Compulsion game to have a content warning. It warns the players that some of the scenes may be disturbing, especially for people who are afraid of spiders, and that there are some swear words.
• The Corruption: Strong negativity like hatred or despair creates Stigma that causes the Grand Tapestry's strands to tangle and knot, which will give rise to Haints if left long enough. It's a Weaver's duty to untangle the strands and heal the lingering pain.
• Creepy Child: The children Huggin' Molly rescues gain an eerie blue pallor to their skin and grow far too accustomed to living in a murky, damp cave for what may be eternity.
• Deal with the Devil: Played with, as the deal is depicted as dangerous but ultimately necessary, per Southern folktales of handling powerful evil entities through trickery. Hazel and Bunny wind up making a deal with Roux to keep Bunny trapped in the illusion of her last day with Cherie, her beloved daughter.
• Death Is Cheap:
  • Dying during any of the platforming sections will have Hazel resurrected and restored by the threads further back in a safe location. This is first shown in a mandatory sequence during Hazel's initial attempt to rescue Lacey from the flood, having a daring leap onto the house's roof from a fallen tree when it gets snagged on the opposite shoreline, only to find her footing unstable on the slippery and unstable surface and fall into the rushing waters when a car get smashed into the house...only to then become teleported back to the fallen tree, to her confusion. Towards the game's end, it's revealed that Lacey saw Hazel fall in, and didn't see her restored by her Weaver powers, leaving her vulnerable to getting trapped inside Kooshma's nightmare realm re-living that moment over and over again so he can feast on her pain.
  • Dying in combat actually downplays this, as the fight re-starts from scratch with Hazel having to overcome her enemies from the beginning, despite getting restored by a hanging thread when re-initiating combat. In general, it's implied that Hazel manages to survive the combat encounters without perishing, even with having her Weaver abilities to resurrect her.
• Delayed Narrator Introduction: The narrator of the story is the Catfish, but he's only officially introduced in Chapter 3.
• Despair Event Horizon: Lacey crossed it when she witnessed Hazel leap for the house and fall into the river, believing she had drowned.
• Disappeared Dad: Hazel's father Trey died when she was young, and both she and Lacey miss him. It is indicated to be a big part of reason for the strained relationship between Lacey and his mother Bunny, though Bunny's relationship with Trey was also pretty fraught.
• The Dragon: Roux uses his power over dreams to feed people's nightmares to Kooshma.
• Evil Tainted the Place: Not necessarily evil, but negative emotions. Flood Mansion is just overflowing with Stigma, which only Hazel can see. When Hazel confronts Bunny in the final chapter, Bunny agrees to leave with Roux to Kooshma's dreamland. By doing this, Bunny's negative emotions for her daughter's Cherie's loss, which festered in the property, vanish, causing the house to collapse onto itself.
• Extreme Omnivore: Two-Toed Tom got gigantic by eating everything, whether it be a pig or a washing machine or a whole house. He's got a Freudian Excuse for it too: since he spent most of his life starving, he never knows where his next meal is coming from and so he gorges himself on everything even when he's full.
• Fantasy Americana: The game is set in a version of the American South based off Louisiana Hoodoo and folklore, where people such as Hazel can wield magic, creatures and beings from regional tall tales are real, and a channel catfish can be gigantic and talk to and make deals with humans.
• Fate Worse than Death: It's implied that as part of her deal with Roux, Bunny will be able to live with an illusory Cherie, but would be cursed to relive her death over and over again for eternity.
• The Ferryman: Shakin' Bones rows a small boat that crosses between the planes of reality. At the end of chapter 11, Hazel buys a ride to Kooshma's Cabaret from him.
• Forced Dance Partner: Near the end of the game, Hazel enters a dreamland and ventures into Kooshma's Cabaret. Inside the venue, Roux manipulates her to walk onto the stage and dance a jazzy number with him.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Hazel visits Mrs. Perle at the start of the game before the hurricane, the camera pans to Mrs. Perle's windowsill and collection of ceramic figurines: a brown mermaid, a green alligator, a red heart and a spider. Barring the red heart, the figurines foreshadow the bosses Hazel will eventually fight. The heart is implied to represent Bunny's plans to utilise Molly's own to resurrect Cherie in a ritual, being placed next to the spider figurine.
    • When Hazel runs out as she sees her house being washed away, she drops and shatters the spider figurine, foreshadowing how she plays a part in Huggin' Molly's death.
  • If you pay attention, it's not too difficult to figure out that Huggin' Molly isn't evil well before Hazel does.
    • A note from Lacey mentions that Preacher Jolene can put her in touch with someone outside the legal system who can help abused children.
    • On the slopes of the Witch's Nose, you can find notes from a group of people who went up the mountain searching for the lost children. One of them broke his leg in a climbing accident, but the next morning, the wound was mysteriously healed and wrapped in red yarn. Hazel puts together that the yarn suggests Molly's presence, but doesn't register that Molly helped the climber.
• Gentle Giant: "Honey" the swamp creature, who helps Hazel in exchange for a game of hide-and-seek. He’s also Ayotunde’s son, transformed by the swamp.
• The Heartless: The game's enemies, Haints, are hostile spirits borne from negative emotions left to fester and become a source of corruption.
• The Heavy: Bunny is small potatoes compared to a cosmic entity like Kooshma, but she still manages to be the main source of the Stigma plaguing Prospero.
• The Hedge of Thorns: Hazel traverses the bayou after the storm in search of her mother, and finds many thorny crimson thickets along the path.
• I Heard That: After the catfish drops Hazel so she can scout a place near Two-Toed Tom after taking her on a ride in the bayou and goes away.
  Hazel: Triflin'-ass mudcat.
  Catfish: Hey, I heard that!
• Hillbilly Horrors: The entire Witch's Nose sequence has a lot of this atmosphere. A remote mountain town where domestic abuse was universally practiced, under the shadow a mysterious boogeyman lurking at the mountain's peak.
• Image Song: Each of the bosses has one detailing their backstory and pain, which usually starts playing during their fight after the bottle is filled.
• Improbable Weapon User: The traditional weapons Weavers fight Haints with are a pair of crochet hooks, a distaff, and spindles.
• Involuntary Dance: Hazel does a dance on stage with Roux at Kooshma's Cabaret, but the shocked and confused look on her face implies she's not doing it willingly.
• I've Come Too Far: In their final encounter, Hazel tries to talk Bunny out of her crusade to resurrect Cherie in a last-ditch effort to avoid handing her over to Roux. Bunny miserably says that she's spent so long scheming and mourning her daughter that she's no longer capable of change.
• Karma Houdini: Roux suffers no comeuppance or even inconvenience during his encounters with Hazel, despite being the story's closest thing to a Satanic Archetype.
• Living Toys: Hazel unintentionally uses her Weaver powers to imbue her beloved ragdoll Crouton with life. He becomes her ally who can squeeze into spaces too small for Hazel.
• Load-Bearing Boss: A variation in that the boss is not defeated by violence, but nonetheless true. When Bunny chooses to leave with Roux, her mansion has been so riddled with Stigma that it can no longer support itself without it, so her departure causes the whole place to fall apart. Hazel and her mother have to make a quick exit.
• Logo Joke: The Showcase trailer of 2023 had the "Compulsion" logo as an ad for boat rides around the bayous with guides.
• The Lost Woods: When Hazel reaches the Crossroads, she has to traverse a misty portion of the bayou, with the arrows pointing to many directions, including the Town of the Tapestry.
• Lumber Mill Mayhem: Hazel has to traverse an old abandoned sawmill to battle the Rougarou and free Laurent from its curse.
• Magical Realism: Straddles the line between this and Urban Fantasy. The setting is a common if small modern city, but while Hazel seems completely unaware of the supernatural elements of the town, most of the people around her (both long term friends and family as well as people she just met) are aware and involved with the supernatural, and even react with some degree of normality to it. Examples include Jolene, a local minister, being aware of Lacey getting help from Huggin' Molly (even having gotten Lacey into contact with her) and being the one to accidentally cause Two-Toed Tom to become a giant, as well as just meeting Rhubarb and learning he caused his brother to turn into a tree.
• Master of Threads: Hazel's Weaver magic involves seeing and manipulating the Strands of the world with her magical crochet hooks, distaff, and spindle. She uses them to bind, manipulate, and unravel her enemies, as well as to create cloth constructs and repair the Grand Tapestry.
• Mundane Utility: The collectable tin flips are pieces of aluminum siding that Hazel can flip over by using her Push ability. Each one awards a small amount of Floof, but there's no justification for why this is the case or why Hazel would think to do this in the first place. The only explanation seems to be that she just thinks it's fun to use her powers to flip stuff over.
• Named After the Injury: If you look closely Two-Toed Tom is in fact missing two toes on his left foreleg.
• Never Grew Up: The children that Huggin' Molly abducts stay children forever, with the holler children still looking the same even after their agemate Itchy has become an old man. With Huggin' Molly dead, it's not clear yet if they're stuck that way or if they'll finally start aging.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Two-Toed Tom, a huge alligator with a small island on its back and a missing upper jaw. Hazel has to fight him in Chapter 5.
• No Self-Buffs: It's noted as an irony that Weavers can heal anyone's trauma but their own. That's why it's important for them to hold to the people they love or meaningful causes to ground them.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The majority of monsters and bosses aren't malicious, just deep in grief and needing to be healed.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Huggin' Molly is a local boogeyman who snatches children, lives hidden in a mountain cavern, and looks like a giant spider woman, but she doesn't hurt the children. She rescues them from abuse and neglect, giving them safe haven in her lair.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Bunny Flood never supported her son Trey marrying Lacey, whom she outright accused of being a Gold Digger. Thus, Lacey refuses to take any money from her in the present even if it would really help.
• Old Flame: Laurent was Lacey's boyfriend for a while, and the closest thing Hazel had to a father at the time, until he left them. We eventually learn it was because he was afraid he would accidentally hurt them as a Rougarou. The post-credits scene implies that he and Lacey have gotten back together.
• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: The Honey Island Swamp Monster and Altamaha-ha both feature into the story, where they're revealed to be the ghost-like forms of a mother and child who were fleeing from slavery.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Hazel faces a Rougarou who is secretly her mom’s ex-boyfriend Laurent. Unlike the wolfman folklore usually portrays it as, this Rougarou looks like a giant red owl.
• Parental Favoritism:
  • Bunny favored her daughter Cherie over her son Trey. To this day she's still trying to resurrect Cherie, even though both of her children are dead.
  • Benjy's Image Song mentions that he was favored by their mother over his brother Rhubarb, which made Rhubarb resentful.
• Parents as People: Hazel loves her mother, but also resents her frequent absence due to her work and the game starts with them having a fight over her leaving Hazel at home to pack for the hurricane. Part of her arc is learning why her mother is the way she is and forgiving her for it.
• Parents in Distress: Hazel leaves their house to check up on the neighbors, and suddenly the house is washed away with her mother inside, prompting a quest to find her.
• Le Parkour: Hazel's journey through the bayou and beyond involves a lot of running, leaping and climbing. Fortunately, she has a background in track and field.
• Patricide: Preacher Jolene was the one to release the starving crocodile at her own father, who was devoured by his pet.
• Physical God: Kooshma the King of Nightmares is in a whole other league compared to the other mythical creatures Hazel encounters; even the Advancing Wall of Doom she confronts over the course of the game is said to just be his "hunger," while the true entity is unfathomably stronger. Sure enough, while she does calm down his appetite in the final boss battle, Roux says it won't inconvenience him for long.
• Poor Communication Kills: Huggin' Molly doesn't appear capable of speech, so she can't tell Hazel that she rescued her mother from the wreckage of their house, and her attempt to explain with puppets just makes it look like she's rubbing it in Hazel's face that she kidnapped Lacey, prompting her boss fight.
• Prefers the Illusion: How Hazel "defeats" Bunny. She and Roux offer her a chance to live in a dream where she will experience the same day with her late daughter Cherie forever and she gladly accepts.
• Promotion to Parent: Instead of hiring a nanny she could certainly afford, Bunny expected Trey to watch over his toddler sister Cherie. However, this is deconstructed to hell and back— Trey was too young for the responsibility and Bunny's over-the-top favoring of Cherie drove him to try to rinse his sister off in the lake out of fear of getting yelled at for letting her get dirty, resulting in her drowning.
• Puny Parachute: One of Hazel's spells weaves a glider between her hands, which she can use to slow her fall or glide through wind tunnels. Presumably, any weight or balance problems are solved by magic.
• Puzzle Boss: Two-Toed Tom, who needs a bell to be rung to expose his Wound, and Huggin' Molly, who needs to have containers thrown at her to bring her into hitting range.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Hazel lets out several "No!" in rapid succession as she sees her house with her mother inside being washed away by the storm.
• Really 700 Years Old: Laurent, Hazel's mother's former boyfriend, was born in the 1920s and looks like a middle-aged man in modern times.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Haints are antagonistic creatures made of dark wispy-like fog with a brilliant red core.
• Red Right Hand: Roux is shaped like a normal man, but his towering height and his glowing golden right eye mark him as something other than human.
• Repression Never Ends Well: Laurent was taught by his father to bottle up all his anger and grief over losing his mother. When he lost his father too, the repressed trauma exploded outward and turned him into a Rougarou, and to this day he still struggles with his anger and pushed Lacey away out of fear of hurting her or Hazel in his rage.
• Rewatch Bonus: Chapter 9 plays very differently once you know the truth that Huggin' Molly is a benevolent figure who rescues children from abusive homes and has been working with Lacey, even having rescued her from the storm.
• Satanic Archetype: Roux, The Dragon to Kooshma, is a lean and menacing figure who tempts people into a dream realm by claiming they can escape their sorrows, only to trap them in a phantom existence where they lose their sanity and identity endlessly experiencing what they tried to escape from in the first place. However, he doesn't have any particular ill will towards Hazel specifically, and the two of them eventually strike a mutually beneficial agreement.
• Seeks Another's Resurrection: Bunny Flood, Hazel's grandmother, tears out Tree-Benjy's and Huggin' Molly's hearts to try to revive her dead daughter Cherie, who died as a baby. She fails, thanks to Hazel's meddling.
• Seen It All: While Hazel starts off very unfamiliar with the truth of the local mythology, she adapts rather quickly. It comes to a head when she collects all of the guilt from Laurent and has to run away from an encroaching power. Considering this is the fourth time she's had to do so in a single day, she gives a bored "Yeah, yeah..." when it happens yet again.
• Shadow Archetype: While Weavers heal tears in the Tapestry by addressing trauma and pain, False Stitchers are those who aren't chosen, but seize power through harming creatures and creating Stigma. Bunny is a False Stitcher, who has created rampant Stigma, tried to kill Benjy, and actually killed Huggin' Molly in her refusal to move on from the death of her daughter. Hazel eventually learns to have sympathy for her and to reach out to others rather than let herself fester in her isolation as Bunny did.
• Shout-Out:
  • Notice how Preacher Jolene's got red hair?
  • Benjy's tree produces giant peaches.
  • Chapter 8 is called "Their Eyes Were Watching" after Their Eyes Were Watching God.
  • The tale of the holler is one to The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with Huggin' Molly eventually luring all the children away save for one boy. Unlike the Piper, Molly is completely benevolent: the entire holler abused their children, so she gave them comfort and eventually took them to safety.
  • Chapter 11 is called "Muddy Waters".
• Shrug Take: In the story trailer, the first time Hazel meets the giant talking catfish, she's in denial that such a thing is real and just walks away.
  Hazel: A talking fish... Hm hm, nope, ain't no way. (wags finger and walks away as if nothing happened)
• Sibling Murder: Two instances:
  • Rhubarb intentionally killed his brother Benjy to free himself from taking care of a mentally handicapped brother.
  • When Hazel's father Trey was a child, he accidentally drowned his younger sister Cherie in a lake while trying to wash some stains on her dress so Bunny wouldn't yell at him for letting Cherie get dirty.
• Silly Will: While inside Two-Toed Tom's belly Hazel can find a last will that was presumably written by someone who got swallowed. The will lampshades the absurdity of the situation.
• Skeletal Musician: Shakin' Bones, a mummy-like/near-skeletal singing undead blues musician with a guitar, who's also much taller than a human.
• Southern Gentleman: When Hazel visits Bunny's summer cottage in Chapter 6, she finds a painting of her paternal grandfather, who visually resembles the archetype: a raven-haired white man in a beige suit and a black knotted thread around his collar..
• Southern Gothic: The developer deep dive explicitly states that the setting is heavily inspired by the genre. Hazel's Weaver magic has her cast and manipulate white magical strands, heavily evoking cotton fibers, and a pervasive atmosphere of decay can be seen in some of the environments. However, there is also an emphasis on the life and vibrance of the environment, with wild animals being conspicuously present throughout the game. The sequences involving Mahalia and Ayotunde are probably the most Southern Gothic the game gets, as they deal specifically with the legacy of American slavery.
• Stop Faux-tion: The characters are styled to evoke stop motion dolls which move in intentionally choppy ways.
• Super Drowning Skills: Truth in Television. NEVER swim or wade in hurricane floodwaters, which contain not only sewage and rotting corpses but shattered glass, broken debris, dangerous animals, toxic chemical runoff, gasoline, and live downed power lines. Particularly Justified in the introduction, since the water in question is an active flash flood that realistically would be deadly to fall into, even for an athlete like Hazel. The inherent danger of hurricane floodwaters, however, does get a little flimsier as Hazel gets further and further away from the destruction in Prospero.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • In the beginning, when Hazel's house is washed downstream by the flooding river, she engages in a brief parkour section alongside the shoreline to catch up to it, eventually making a leap from a downed tree onto the roof when it catches on the opposing riverbank. Whilst players might have been expecting an Uncharted-esque sequence, and the roof looks to be fairly secure to land on, the game quickly points out that leaping from stable ground to an unstable landing spot is a very bad idea, especially since the slight slope to the roof and the rain make it hard for Hazel to keep herself balanced upright. All it takes is the house getting hit by further flood debris getting carried on the river to destabilise Hazel, knocking her into the rushing water. If not for her Weaver powers kicking in to save her, Hazel would have most assuredly died from such a foolhardy stunt.
  • Relatedly, the game briefly shows Lacey watching Hazel's antics from inside the house's window before the house gets knocked away downstream. In the climax, it turns out that Lacey fell into a Despair Event Horizon at seemingly watching her daughter die trying to rescue her, leaving her soul vulnerable to getting trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine in Kooshma's nightmare realm. Even when it turns out Lacey is acquainted with the supernatural elements in the region (namely, Huggin' Molly), she naturally had no reason to assume her daughter was saved by such magic when she didn't see her resurrect on the shoreline.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Roux has a golden right eye, and he is very adept at some type of magic.
• Talking Animal: In chapter 3, Hazel meets a giant catfish caught up a tree. The catfish asks Hazel to use her Weaver abilities to help him.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Crossed with Magic Is Feminine; All Weavers shown are women, including the newest one Hazel, her predecessor Mahalia, and Hazel's grandma Bunny, who is considered a "False Stitcher" because she meddles with the Tapestry instead of fixing it.
• There Are No Therapists: Deconstructed as one of the game's auxiliary themes. Lacey is a social worker and Weavers are essentially metaphysical therapists who deal with the effects of severe trauma on the fabric of reality itself. One of the game's main throughlines is the question of who they can turn to for support, and the idea that those who heal others can't necessarily heal themselves.
• Threads of Fate: The narration at the start of the game states that the world is woven together by a "Grand Tapestry"; when it's damaged, it gives rise to Haints, and a Weaver's job is to restore and mend the threads.
• Transflormation:
  • After being locked inside a tree hollow, Benjy merged with the tree itself and grew huge. By the time of the game, the Giant Catfish gets stuck upon its branches after the storm.
  • Something very similiar happened to Cherie, who was buried under a tree that has now taken on her features.
  • Honey is a being made of swamp foliage, but he was once a human child.
• Troll: In chapter 13, as Hazel moves to find her mother in Kooshma's dreamland, she finds herself in a television studio for her illusion. When she makes her way across the areas, she sees billboards with ads that mock her journey so far, like running shoes to run better to her house, or bug spray for killing Huggin' Molly.
• Underground Railroad: The last Weaver before Hazel was a woman named Mahalia who used her powers to lead enslaved people to freedom.
• The Unfought: The story's two most persistent antagonists are Roux and Bunny, but neither of them get into a proper battle with Hazel. Roux instead agrees to return Hazel's mother in exchange for guiding Bunny into his dream realm, purging the Stigma from the bayou even if it allows him to go on tormenting people.
• Wham Line: After Hazel defeats Huggin' Molly, she drops Lacey's locket. When Hazel touches it, she sees a message tied to it, which makes her realize that Molly is a wholly benevolent being who rescued Lacey rather than kidnapping her and is trying to help her:
  Lacey: It's dark. My lungs are burning, full of water and silt. Body breaking in a hundred places. A flash of red, sunrise breaking over the horizon. Warming me like wildfire. Mending cracks. Molly doing what she's always done, but I never truly seen: healing.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Most of the bosses Hazel encounters have a tragic backstory that made them what they are.
• World-Healing Wave: A minor example. Whenever Hazel defeats the Haints in an area or unravels a Knot, the Stigma evaporates and grass and flowers bloom.
• Would Hurt a Child: Hazel thinks Huggin' Molly takes children away from their parents to hurt them. It turns out she was misled, and Huggin' Molly actually rescues children from abusive homes.