The Midnight Walk Review | A Claymation Masterpiece Finds Its Perfect Home on Switch 2

The Midnight Walk opens with fire. A figure wreathed in flame stumbles onto a lonely highway, and a small lantern creature named Potboy flickers to life beside them. Within minutes, you are tiptoeing through a world sculpted entirely from real clay, where every tree, every monster, every crumbling ruin was shaped by human hands and then 3D scanned into the game. Nothing else looks like this. Nothing else feels like this.

What Is The Midnight Walk?

Developed by MoonHood and published by Fast Travel Games, The Midnight Walk originally launched on May 8, 2025 for PC, PS5, and PS VR2. It arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 on March 26, 2026. The game costs $29.99 on all platforms.

MoonHood was founded by Klaus Lyngeled and Olov Redmalm, both formerly of Zoink Games, the studio behind Lost in Random, Fe, and Ghost Giant. Their pedigree shows. The Midnight Walk carries the same emotional intelligence and offbeat charm that defined those earlier games, pushed even further by the most ambitious art direction any of them have attempted.

You play as The Burnt One, a mysterious figure who befriends Potboy, a lost lantern creature. Together, you journey along a twisted highway through five chapters of fire and darkness, outsmarting monsters who want to devour Potboy’s flame. The game blends first person exploration, environmental puzzles, and stealth sequences into a 4 to 6 hour experience.

The Midnight Walk holds a 79 on Metacritic, an 80 on OpenCritic (recommended by 83% of critics), and a Very Positive rating on Steam at 93%. It won Best VR Game at The Game Awards 2025 and Best VR Game at the Steam Awards 2025, with additional recognition from BAFTA and DICE. The game has sold over 100,000 copies across all platforms.

What Works

The art direction is genuinely world class. Over 700 clay models were hand sculpted and 3D scanned to build The Midnight Walk’s world. The result is a visual style that sits somewhere between Laika animation (Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings) and a fever dream. Textures have a tactile warmth that no digital art pipeline can replicate. Fingerprints are visible in the clay. Surfaces have the slight imperfections that come from real human hands shaping real material. It is breathtaking, and the Switch 2 port preserves the visual fidelity surprisingly well in both docked and handheld mode.

The atmosphere is suffocating in the best way. Sound design carries enormous weight here. The score shifts between haunting melodies and oppressive silence, and the ambient audio pulls you deeper into each environment. Combined with the claymation aesthetic, The Midnight Walk achieves a “cozy horror” tone that is entirely its own. Unsettling without being gratuitous. Beautiful without being safe.

Potboy is an all timer companion character. Your lantern friend is wordless but deeply expressive. The way Potboy reacts to danger, curiosity, and affection gives the game its emotional core. Protecting this fragile creature feels genuinely urgent. When the late game puts your bond to the test, the payoff lands hard.

The storytelling is confident and layered. Five tales of fire and darkness unfold across the journey, each with its own cast of oddball characters. The narrative explores themes of loss, protection, and what it means to carry light through darkness. It avoids heavy handed exposition and trusts you to piece things together. The final chapter reframes earlier events in ways that reward attention.

The Switch 2 port is excellent. Handheld mode is where this game shines brightest on Nintendo’s new hardware. Playing a claymation horror adventure on a portable screen, in bed or on the couch, feels perfect for the intimate scale of the experience. Performance holds steady, and the visual quality sacrifices are minimal. If you have been curious about this game but do not own a PS5 or gaming PC, this is a great way to play it. For context, the Switch 2 has quickly become a strong platform for indie ports. Balatro’s surprise Switch 2 launch proved that the hardware handles ambitious indie titles well. If you are an indie developer considering a port, our guide to porting indie games to consoles covers the process.

Room to Grow

Gameplay takes a back seat to presentation. This is The Midnight Walk’s most polarizing quality. The puzzles are rarely challenging. The stealth sections are more atmospheric than tense. You will spend most of your time walking, looking, and absorbing the world rather than engaging with complex mechanics. If you need moment to moment gameplay depth from your games, The Midnight Walk may feel passive.

The price to length ratio is a real conversation. Four to six hours for $29.99. That is the math, and your tolerance for it depends entirely on how you value games. If you measure worth by hours, The Midnight Walk is a tough sell. If you measure worth by the quality and density of the experience, it delivers more memorable moments per hour than games ten times its length. Completionists chasing every collectible can stretch it to around 8 to 10 hours.

Some chapters are stronger than others. The middle chapters hit a slight rhythm issue where the pacing slows between set pieces. Chapter 4 in particular feels stretched compared to the tightly crafted opening and the devastating finale. It is a minor issue, but noticeable in a short game where every section has to count.

The Bottom Line

The Midnight Walk is a triumph of artistic vision. MoonHood built something that no other studio could have made, a world that feels genuinely handcrafted because it literally is. The claymation aesthetic is not a gimmick. It is the foundation of the game’s emotional power, giving weight and warmth to a story about carrying light through darkness.

The gameplay will not challenge you. The runtime will not overwhelm you. But the atmosphere, the visual artistry, the sound design, and the bond you form with Potboy will stay with you long after the credits roll. This is a game that trades mechanical depth for emotional depth, and the trade is worth it.

The Switch 2 port makes The Midnight Walk portable for the first time, and handheld mode might be the definitive way to experience it. If you have any appreciation for animation, horror, or games that take creative risks, this deserves your attention.

The Midnight Walk scores an 8 out of 10.

The Midnight Walk is available on Steam, PlayStation 5, PS VR2, and Nintendo Switch 2 for $29.99.