Image: Fast Travel Games
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The Midnight Walk stands out as one of the most creative games released this year. But the VR version comes up short in ways that are difficult to ignore.
There’s nothing quite like The Midnight Walk. The Swedish studio Moonhood has pulled off something rare in today’s gaming landscape: every object in the game was first hand-sculpted from clay, then scanned in 3D, and finally animated with a stop-motion effect. This gives the entire world a tactile, one-of-a-kind look where you can almost see every fingerprint and every tiny imperfection in the clay.
The catch? In VR, the game’s resolution is so low that most of these lovingly crafted details are lost in a haze.
An atmospheric welcome to a bizarre new world
In The Midnight Walk, you play as “The Burnt One,” who wakes up in what amounts to a makeshift grave and has to claw his way out. The opening is brilliantly staged: your vision is blurred, sound is muffled, and the world feels disorienting.
Two tiny creatures sprout from the ground, offering you eyes and ears — which you physically “install” into your head with a flick of your hand. Only then does the image sharpen and the game’s rich 3D audio kick in for the first time.
If you play, do yourself a favor and use decent headphones. Neither the built-in speakers on Quest 3 nor the included PSVR 2 in-ears come close to doing justice to the sound design in The Midnight Walk.
Puzzles that make you rely on your senses
The very first puzzle sets the tone for why great surround sound matters here. Standing in a forest clearing, you find yourself encircled by four wall cabinets stuffed with drawers. There’s a locked door behind you, with a keyhole. To figure out which drawer holds the key, you close your eyes and let the emerging sounds guide you.
At the beginning, the puzzles are kept simple. Armed with a match, I have to light candles along the path. | Image: MIXED / Fast Travel Games
What’s especially clever on PSVR 2 is that the headset’s eye-tracking means you can literally close your eyes, and the game will pick up on it. On PC, you’ll need to press a button instead. Later on, this “eyes closed” mechanic isn’t just a gimmick — it’s a recurring trick for solving puzzles and interacting with the world.
Meet Potboy: Your pyromaniac companion
As you wander deeper into this surreal world, you soon meet “Potboy”, a quirky little guy who looks like a walking jug full of fire. After you set his head ablaze and feed him some weird berries, he happily tags along. Together, you set off on the titular Midnight Walk — a perilous, nightmarish trek toward the distant Moon Mountain.
One little bite and “Potboy” won’t leave your side. | Image: MIXED / Fast Travel Games
Along the way, you’ll encounter creeping monsters. If they spot you, it’s game over. There’s no combat here: your only options are sneaking, hiding in cupboards, or sprinting for your life. Scattered throughout the environment, you’ll find “earpieces” and notes that drop hints about the game’s lore or give you survival tips for dealing with the creepers.
Again and again, I come across little hints on how to find my way around on my midnight walk. | Image: MIXED / Fast Travel Games
Early on, most environmental puzzles are straightforward. You’ll need to track down candles and light them with oversized matches before they burn out, or send Potboy on fire-making errands.
Sometimes, you’ll chase Potboy through pipe systems to reach inaccessible spots, use the “eyes closed” trick to discover hidden paths, or stand on pressure plates with your little jug buddy to open doors.
It could have been so much better…
As I mentioned earlier, the art design and soundscape in The Midnight Walk are genuinely fantastic — they really make you want to keep exploring. So, why am I putting the controller down for now? The game’s resolution is shockingly low, and the colors appear flat and washed out. You’d think the OLED displays in the PSVR 2 could deliver those deep blacks we all love, but instead, I’m stuck wandering through endless shades of gray. It feels like the entire world is shrouded in a fog.
The Midnight Walk is available for both PC and PlayStation 5, with VR modes on both platforms. I tested the console version with PSVR 2, the PC VR version using both PSVR 2 with the PC adapter, and Meta Quest 3 via Link cable. The low-res, dull look is present across the board, but it’s especially noticeable on the PS5 with PSVR 2.
Here are my subjective impressions for each of the different setups.
Meta Quest 3 on PC
With the clear pancake lenses of the Meta Quest 3, the low resolution of The Midnight Walk stands out even more. The LCD’s lackluster blacks and weaker contrast make the blurry image much more obvious. On the bright side: whenever small text pops up, it’s actually most legible here.
PSVR 2 on PC
This setup does the best job masking the game’s resolution issues. Pairing PSVR 2’s OLED displays with a decent gaming PC gives you a richer, more contrasty image, and the atmospheric lighting and shadow effects really pop.
On my machine (AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 64GB RAM, RTX 4080 Super), the game ran smoothly on maxed-out “epic” settings, with a consistently solid frame rate.
PSVR 2 on PlayStation 5
In direct comparison to the PC version, The Midnight Walk looks even weaker on PSVR 2 with the PlayStation 5. Small, bright text on dark backgrounds is almost unreadable, the overall motion feels less fluid, and that foggy veil over the visuals is at its worst here.
When we reached out to the developers, they told us that the PSVR 2 version natively renders at 60 FPS, then uses Sony’s controversial reprojection tech to upscale to 120 Hz. There’s no foveated rendering, either. Honestly, if they had implemented that tech, I think the console version could have squeezed a lot more atmosphere out of this spooky world.
By the way, all the screenshots in this article are from the PSVR 2 version, unedited.
My hands-on verdict on The Midnight Walk
The handcrafted world in this unique game boasts so many details — but the low resolution, weak contrast, and muted colors too often turn everything into a blurry pixel soup.
I’m really hoping Moonhood will roll out some patches and boost the resolution. The world of The Midnight Walk deserves to be seen much more clearly in VR.
If Moonhood can get the technical side under control, The Midnight Walk could become the kind of audiovisual experience that belongs in every VR library. Until then, we just can’t recommend the VR version.
The Midnight Walk is available now on the PlayStation Store and Steam for $39.99.
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