The Midnight Barber Is The Wolf Among Us, But An ASMR Rhythm Game

The Midnight Barber wasn’t on my radar before I visited Taipei Game Show. In fact, it seems like nobody is talking about it, which is surprising to me considering just how compelling its core concept is. The game was a finalist for Best Narrative and Best Audio at the show’s Indie Game Awards, the latter of which it won. After spending some time with it at a small booth at the Xbox-sponsored Indie Game House, I see why.

Noir-Fantasy Realness

The debut game from Barcelona-based indie studio Omaet Games bills itself as a narrative ASMR adventure (owing to the satisfying, muted hair-cutting repetition), heavy on the narrative. The game is primarily a visual novel told from the perspective of Clara, the titular barber who only opens shop at midnight. This is when her clientele is most active, because she serves supernatural creatures like werewolves, vampires, and more – people who can’t go to regular shops for their grooming needs.

The Midnight Barber’s version of late ‘70s Barcelona is one moving from authoritarian dictatorship to democracy. In the demo I played, Clara is cutting the hair of a Duende, a creature from Latin folklore, who appears to have gotten caught up in some kind of criminal trouble. As Clara cuts her customer’s hair, she probes to find out the truth behind the tale – as the player, you get to choose the topics you ask about, unlocking new topics and uncovering key information to help you piece together exactly what’s happening.

Before long, a werewolf policeman comes in, prompting your customer to become invisible and vanish from view. Now, the cop is asking questions about you and your client, which allows you as the player to make some choices. You can be honest with him, telling him what you know and cooperating with the police, or you can choose not to snitch and protect her instead. I chose not to snitch, at which point the cop smiled and asked me if I’d really thought he hadn’t already been able to smell her in the room.

This is where the demo ended, and I immediately wanted to know how it would all continue. It’s clear that The Midnight Barber has an interesting story to tell and fascinating world to explore, and I’m already very into its supernatural noir vibes. I immediately thought of the Fable comics and Telltale Games’ adaptation, The Wolf Among Us. Though you’re not playing as the werewolf cop himself this time, you’re doing some investigation within a supernatural world too.

Hypnotic Rhythm-Based Gameplay

The game could stand on the strength of its storytelling alone, but it’s also supported by an excellent gameplay loop. As I played it, it was almost like the world began to melt away – that’s how absorbing the minute to minute gameplay is.

The whole game revolves around using rhythm to lull your clients into a sense of security, pressing buttons and triggers to the beat to match their “inner rhythm” and lower their guard. You spray water into their hair, snip, and shave them according to button prompts, and the more relaxed they become, the more likely they are to answer your increasingly pointed questions. It’s incredibly easy to get locked into a groove of patterns within a beat that get more complex over time, switching up and becoming more interesting as they reveal more to you, adding more buttons to press and notes in surprising but still congruent places.

Combine its noir-inspired fantasy story and well-tuned rhythm gameplay with The Midnight Barber’s beautiful art, and it’s not hard to see why this indie got a lot of attention at Taipei Game Show. It’s not slated to launch until 2026, but I’m already itching to dig up the conspiracy underpinning it. You can wishlist it on Steam here.