SPIRIT OF MIDNIGHT

Spirit of Midnight is a point-and-click adventure mystery game published and developed by Good Badger.

Play as a house cat who encounters a peculiar spirit and must set off on an adventure full of mystery and bizarre and intelligent creatures. Spirit of Midnight is being developed by Scott Smith with original music by Brendon Williams and Bryan Atkinson, sound design by Zeke Fenelon, and additional dev support by Alex Schearer.

Spirit of Midnight is set to release on Steam in 2022 with additional platforms to be announced.

They even have adorable plushies available!

Puppet: Alright, so this is Puppet interviewing Spirit of Midnight here at PAX. So let’s get started! It’s good to see you again from last year!

Scott: Yes, you too.

Puppet: Give us a rundown of who you are, what you do, and a little bit about your game.

Scott: Sure, so my name is Scott, I’m the primary developer on this game. It’s almost a solo-dev game but we have some great people helping including a great composer — everyone. And the game is Spirit of Midnight and it is about a cat exploring outside for the first time and unraveling a mystery around a forest spirit that allowed him to leave in the first place. Upon leaving he discovers that there’s so much more outside including a hidden town of other animals in the forest. The game is about restoring the balance and enjoying your time outside as a cat. 

Puppet: Yeah, oh my god, I love that. So what originally got you inspired to make a game like this? 

Scott: Well, it is at its core a point-and-click adventure game that is somewhat modernized. It was definitely inspired by the Monkey Island games; I played a lot of Lucas Arts games growing up. But I wanted to bring this to kind of like a modern audience. Obviously, you know, there is a new Monkey Island game coming out and it’s going to be awesome but this game is going to be a little bit more approachable: you’re not going to get lost like you would in the 90’s in some of those older games. And it’s supposed to be entertaining, cute, and just all-around fun for everyone. 

Puppet: Yeah! Most importantly, are you going to have plushies?

Scott: Yes, the plushies are launching today. 

Puppet: *audible gasp*

Scott: They are for sale today here and online and they are twenty dollars. So they are pretty affordable. 

Puppet: Oh my gosh! That’s actually really good! Oh, which characters are going to be plushies? 

Scott: Ok, so right now we have Midnight who is the main protagonist of the game — so the cat. And the second runner-up would be Felix the badger but at the moment we don’t have any plans.

Puppet: Cool. Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. So, about you: how did you originally get into indies? 

Scott: Sure, so I actually started off in kind of a different career path doing design work, all digital design, so UX. And eventually, I just wanted to explore something that was more interesting and so games are fun. It’s just all about enjoyment and kind of spreading that through the world, I guess. It just seemed like a much more fun career path to switch over to and luckily the Seattle area has a great support group of indies and it’s been great. 

Puppet: Yeah. And so, this is kind of about your game but also just your journey in general: if you could go back and change anything and/or give yourself advice, what would it be?

Scott: Well, the main point of advice would be to always work with more people. Because like, you’re doing this every day for years and if you’re mostly on your own you’re going to be working a lot longer. *laughs* So if I could go back I would probably try to find a way to do a bootstrap or get funding early on to make the game faster and more enjoyable with more people. That said, this was a great way for me even to get a game off the ground. Oftentimes with teams, you will have different ideas and somebody has to leave for some life event. So this was a way to make the game and I’m pretty happy about it. 

Puppet: That’s awesome. That’s so wonderful. So that’s all I have. Do you have anything you want me to know about the game or that you want to talk about? 

Scott: Well, right now it’s available to wishlist on Steam. Some other platforms are to be announced. Obviously, I would love to bring this to consoles. I think the game is currently designed best for consoles. And yeah, just look to the future for more updates.

Puppet: Cool! And where can we find you online? 

Scott: You can find us at SpiritofMidnight.com and we also post a lot on Instagram as our primary social. 

Puppet: Awesome. So this has been Puppet with Spirit of Midnight. Thank you so much for joining me today. I mean, I joined you I guess! 

Scott: *laughs* Yeah, it’s great!