At a recent preview event for Split Fiction, I talked to Josef Fares, the director of Hazelight. As we discussed the game, he bristled with pride and excitement, repeatedly claiming that players would see something in Split Fiction that they had never seen before. As I played through a demo running just over two hours that jumped between missions from throughout the game, I couldn’t help but think that he could be right.
Split Fiction is the next evolution of what has become Hazelight’s trademark style: emotionally charged and thematically-driven two-player co-op games. Like A Way Out and It Takes Two before it, Split Fiction can only be played in co-op. Its story follows two writers, Mio and Zoe, who are tricked into participating in a program that allows a supercomputer to strip them of all of their creative ideas. Something goes wrong as they are being put in the machine, however, and they end up in the same compartment, leading to them having to traverse both of their ideas.
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The soul of Split Fiction‘s story is derived from how opposite Mio and Zoe are. Mio lives in the big city and writes action-packed science fiction stories, while Zoe prefers the quiet countryside and more puzzle-driven fantasy stories. Even with the sections I played through being jumbled, it was easy to start caring for the characters and to see how their friendship could be founded and start to blossom through the game. And with how funny and well-written both of the characters were, the journey will undoubtedly be a fun one.
Hazelight’s co-op prowess continues to shine in Split Fiction.
Then there are the levels. Hazelight’s gameplay specialty is designing co-op-reliant levels where each player has different mechanics at their disposal,l and they need to work together to combine them and progress. Split Fiction looks to be no different, with the levels that I played through being some of the most cinematic, dense, and mechanically imaginative in the studio’s portfolio.
Just a few minutes into the demo, my co-op partner and I were in a story where we stepped into the shoes of cybernetic ninja assassins on a quest for revenge. My partner had a whip that could be used to pick up and throw objects or move large mechanical arms. Meanwhile, I had a katana that could do standard attacks or be thrown at pads in the environment to switch my gravity, allowing me to run on walls and ceilings.
First, we moved through the hallways of a cyberpunk building, solving puzzles and getting used to our abilities. Then, we exited the building to work our way across a racing highway filled with flying cars in the pouring rain. I had to jump from car to car, running on the side of them and cutting connections while my partner had to swing cranes and ladders into position with his whip.
Still, the variation went even further. Later, we had to fight the police by throwing barrels at their car and defeat a massive parking policy robot. I had to drive a motorcycle on the sides of skyscrapers while my partner navigated a captcha and terms of service agreements on a cell phone. Every section brought something new to the table, and each one was as fun as the last.
Zoe’s fantasy stories were just as fun, although they were far less action-oriented. One of Zoe’s sections had us platforming through a city while trolls ravaged it. Another gave me a dragon that could glide and spit acid, while my partner received one that could climb walls and roll into objects to move them.
Yet another gave each of us two fantasy creatures to shapeshift into that we used to navigate complicated platforming sections. The levels were beautiful to look at and helped mix the pacing up while also giving some more space for fun interactions and character development for Mio and Zoe.
Jumping back and forth between the genres worked well to mix things up and seeing the two characters in their elements felt very natural. It will be interesting to see how it is handled in the full launch but in the preview build, it seemed as though each level would have plenty of introduction to prevent giving players whiplash at the changes.
Apart from the main levels, we were also introduced to smaller side levels known as side stories. The one that we were given to play through saw the players taking control of pigs in a food-themed world. My pig could dash forward with rainbow farts while my partner’s could extend his body upward like a slinky and pull his lower end up to reach high spaces.
The level was a breath of fresh air that progressed from funny to absurd as we found pigs roasting another to eat, and we were eventually turned into hot dogs ourselves. Then, we had to roll around on a picnic table to reach the grill, squirt condiments onto ourselves, and then roll into our buns to finish the section. It was a lot of fun while also providing an interesting look into Zoe’s history and how she processed the trauma of learning that she was eating an animal as a young girl with her writing.
As you play through all of the levels you learn a lot about both of the characters. Talking with a person about something they are passionate about is always great, and Split Fiction takes full advantage of this by slowly peeling back the layers of its characters as they enthuse over seeing their stories come to life in a new way. Meanwhile, their excitement is contrasted with the other character’s gripes about the stories in a really fun dynamic.
Both Mio and Zoe are also deeply relatable, at least from the opening cutscenes that we saw during the preview. At the start, Zoe is adorably ecstatic about finally being published, a feeling that any creative person will immediately relate to. On the other hand, Mio is much more skeptical and suspicious of the corporation leading the program. Her more hardened outlook is also deeply relatable, especially in the current rise of AI and the devaluing of creative pursuits by corporations. Both of their positions make sense and set interesting foundations that the full version of the game will hopefully build on.
There was so much shown to us during our relatively brief time with the game that it is impossible to go over it all in detail. On top of the sections discussed above, there was a science fiction ode to SSX, a co-op version of pinball, insane boss fights, and a lot of great smaller moments. Everything shown seems to indicate that Split Fiction is Hazelight firing on all cylinders, offering fans the great style of game that the studio has become known for. Thankfully, there isn’t too much longer to wait.
Split Fiction releases on March 6 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
