In the acclaimed video game South of Midnight, players journey through a hauntingly beautiful vision of the Deep South alongside Hazel Flood, a magical Weaver, whose powers can mend. Facing mythical creatures and macabre scenes inspired by Southern American folklore, Hazel dives headfirst into a world steeped in magic, memory, and family secrets.
Lauded for its stop-motion animation, engaging narrative, and atmospheric soundtrack, South of Midnight was recently awarded a Peabody Award in the “Interactive & Immersive” category.
Lisa Hunter ’85 was the narrative director for the project.
Hunter first arrived at Barnard College with aspirations of becoming a writer. “Part of the reason I picked Barnard is because I used to look at the back of books and say, ‘Where did this writer go to school?’” she recalled. “And Barnard just kept coming up.”
At Barnard, Hunter immersed herself in the liberal arts curriculum, studying across disciplines that would unexpectedly inform her future career.
“When you study liberal arts, people always say, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ I was thinking about it recently, and every single course I took, I've managed to use.”
After graduating, Hunter pursued a wide range of writing and arts-inspired jobs in New York City, including at both The Metropolitan Opera and The American Museum of Natural History.
“I looked for the most interesting jobs I could until I could do just creative writing full time,” she said.
Then, after years of writing for television and film, she landed her first video game gig in 2016. “It’s very unusual for a 1985 graduate to be working in the video game industry, especially a woman,” she said, a trailblazer in her own right. “I'm very much an outlier. But, if you were in my era at Barnard, all the alumnae were outliers in some way.”
What started as a freelance project evolved into a full-time role after Microsoft bought the studio she was working at. Hunter and her team then began developing South of Midnight shortly after.
Balancing narration and gameplay was a challenge, Hunter observed. She likened her work to experimental literature in many aspects. “You're telling a story in multiple ways. Some of it is in things that you read, some of it is cinematic. Some things are just in the environment that players are supposed to pay attention to,” said Hunter. “And you have to make the players think that they're driving the car. Everything that they're doing is their decision.”
Though South of Midnight was released in 2025, Hunter says her narrative research inadvertently began much earlier, back in her Barnard days. Hunter said fellow Barnard alumna, Zora Neale Hurston, was the “touchstone” for the project, citing her collections of Southern folklore as a huge point of inspiration for Hazel’s journey in the game. Hunter and her team of writers kept Hurston's writings on hand for the duration of the project. It was also important to have a writing team with lived experience in the South.
“We wanted a diverse writing room,” she said. “We wanted people who had experience, both in the South and as Black women. And then people who were just very good at history. Everybody had a particular area of expertise.”
South of Midnight, which took six years to develop, received multiple accolades, including The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Games Awards for “New Intellectual Property,” the 2025 Game Award for “Games for Impact” and, most recently, the Peabody Award for “Interaction & Immersion.”
The Peabody Awards annually honor excellence in storytelling through various mediums — radio, television, and more. The recognition was a testament to the team’s passion for South of Midnight. “There was a lot of love that was poured into the game, and I think [audiences and critics] can tell,” said Hunter. “It came out of something really personal. People brought their own experiences into the creative process.”
The creative process, as explained by Hunter, was very delicate, akin to fitting pieces into a puzzle. The team of writers actively collaborated alongside animators and designers to ensure every little detail aligned to make for seamless gameplay. Hunter found satisfaction in the challenge.
“I think this is the most exciting genre that I've worked in and I'm really happy to have ended up here,” she said.
The game is also accompanied by an art book, The Art and Music of South of Midnight, co-written by Hunter and South of Midnight’s art director.
While players follow Hazel in the pursuit of a new place to call home, Hunter looks back to Barnard as the setting where her own creative story first began.
“I think about the women who I went to school with. They've had these incredible careers in writing and publishing,” she said. “Barnard is a wonderful kind of sisterhood.”