When Moonhood and Fast Travel Games announced The Midnight Walk back in September of 2024, its striking claymation aesthetic jumped out to me, with the prospect of VR support feeling like a cool bonus on top of an already striking-looking game.
After having played through the roughly 4-6 hour journey, I can say that not only is The Midnight Walk one of the best use cases of claymation, but one of the best VR experiences I’ve played this year. In The Midnight Walk, players assume the role of the Burnt One, one of the many strange denizens of the darkness-filled claymation world crafted by Moonhood. Players must guide Potboy, a sentient pot creature with an uncanny fiery wick on its head, along with the player as they make their trek towards an uncertain future.
Potboy acts as the players’ beacon from the dangers that run rampant in the dark lands of The Midnight Walk as they journey to the summit of Moon Mountain in the hopes of restoring light to a world draped in perpetual darkness. Gameplay in The Midnight Walk feels a bit like a point-and-click adventure game, with the player directing Potboy to various points of interest, usually to light a series of candles, stand on a weight-sensitive switch, distract a stalking monster or solve some form of fire-based puzzle or environmental obstacle.
“I can say that not only is The Midnight Walk one of the best use cases of claymation, but one of the best VR experiences I’ve played this year.”
The Burnt One is not wholly dependent on Potboy and has access to their own limited but useful toolset to see it through to the end, chiefly a matchlock that can light distant targets, often required for some puzzle solving throughout the game. The matchlock is limited to three shots before needing a match, which usually can be found in close proximity to the puzzle you’re currently engaged in.
Matchboxes can be found strewn about the game world and come in two flavours: your standard red flame that quickly burns out, requiring the player to light their way forward, while blue-tinged flames last much longer and act more like a torch in particularly dark sections of the game.
Typically, I’m not the biggest fan of puzzle-heavy adventures, but The Midnight Walk keeps things light (no pun intended) while still managing to keep solutions feeling satisfying and engaging to get through. When you’re not solving environmental-based puzzles, you’ll be escorting the Burnt One and Potboy through treacherous monster-infested lands, which turns the game into a survival-horror experience reminiscent of games like Outlast and Resident Evil, as players bob and weave between hiding spots within the level.
“The Midnight Walk’s aesthetics feel like a love letter to greats like Tim Burton and the children’s illustrator Lane Smith.”
The Midnight Walk also features an interesting blinking mechanic, which on PC is bound to a button and can be used anytime during gameplay to scan the environment to isolate sound and find hidden items, find your way forward and other secrets that require embracing the darkness. Unravelling and illuminating the stories behind some of the eclectic cast of characters as you play The Midnight Walk often leads to sombre revelations that enrich the atmospheric adventure game, adding weight to the journey as players brave the dark and unending night.
On PC, I noticed a few minor issues, such as weird tracking when trying to light my matchlock that caused the match in my other hand to become suspended in the air while refusing to refill my ammo. Other annoying niggles include one instance, where the player has to freeze an enemy in place on top of a pressure plate, but in practice resulted in situations where the enemy would not budge into place or instantly kill the player, despite being several feet away from it. Calibration also never truly felt perfect, as I found the sitting experience a few inches too short, which sometimes led to the camera clipping into the environment during cutscenes (in VR).
“…if you have a VR headset, The Midnight Walk in virtual reality is a must-play…”
Thankfully, the handful of bugs during my journey were easily remedied by a restart or by continuing forward, which resulted in a mostly smooth experience that didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the game.
The Midnight Walk can be played in both VR and as a flatscreen experience. However, if you have a VR headset, The Midnight Walk in virtual reality is a must-play, featuring one of the most imaginative worlds to get lost in. On that note, The Midnight Walk’s aesthetics feel like a love letter to greats like Tim Burton and the children’s illustrator Lane Smith. From the imperfect and pockmarked texture work of the environments to the deliberately stilted low FPS of character movements, The Midnight Walk’s claymation world feels real and full of life.
Even if you’re not a fan of puzzle-heavy adventure games or survival horror, The Midnight Walk handles the genre in a way that feels accessible and, despite its often unsettling aesthetic, is never too scary that it should turn off those who can’t typically stomach it. Conversely, if you’re a fan of the uncanny or claymation, The Midnight Walk is an essential experience made even better in VR.
