It all started at The Game Awards 2017 when Hazelight Studios director Josef Fares said, “Fuck the Oscars” to an audience of millions of viewers. It was a funny and sobering moment in an otherwise advertisement-heavy show. After his profanity-filled yet otherwise innocuous speech, the show introduced a new gameplay trailer for the 2018 co-op game, A Way Out.
Little did we know, that was the beginning of Hazelight Studios’ rise. The next year, A Way Out was nominated for Best Game Direction at the Game Awards 2018, but it didn’t win the category. That didn’t matter, however, because three years later, Hazelight’s follow-up co-op game, It Takes Two, won the coveted Game of the Year award at the Game Awards 2021.
It feels right that Hazelight’s next game, Split Fiction, was revealed at the Game Awards 2024. Prior to the announcement, Rolling Stone went hands on for a one hour demo and sat down with Fares to discuss why he chose to reveal the game at this year’s ceremony, the challenges of building a co-op game, and how to create engaging and innovative play mechanics.
A Tale of Two Girls
Split Fiction follows two young writers named Zoe and Mio who are looking to get their stories published, and come across a corporation specializing in simulation. Its technology lets users play out their stories in a simulation, but something goes horribly wrong. Zoe is a fantasy writer while Mio pens sci-fi, and their simulations become intertwined, forcing them to find a way out of their respective worlds.
Zoe and Mio are actually the names of Fares’s daughters, but he clarifies that’s as deep as it goes. “They’re four and two, so it’s not personality-wise,” Fares says. “That’s just because I love my daughters, and it felt so natural. There are two women as the main characters. Plus, Mio and Zoe are really cool names. Don’t you think so?”
Split Fiction sees the sisters Mio and Zeo bouncing between sci-fi and fantasy themed levels.
Electronic Arts
The game is an action platformer where two players each control Zoe and Mio. Levels have either a sci-fi or fantasy theme with it; each has a different kind of gameplay mechanic, and both girls have their own special traversal abilities. Throughout my time with the demo, Fares showed me how creative and crazy some of these mechanics and levels were.
In one sci-fi level, Zoe and Mio are shaped like spheres, and the movement felt reminiscent of a Metroid game. Zoe can attach to walls while Mio can break herself down into a bunch of spider-like particles, allowing herself to go through vents. In another area, Zoe has a tether that lets her remove covers off switches while Mio’s lightsaber-esque sword hits them. The way their separate abilities synergize together to solve the puzzles is incredibly satisfying. There was also a huge amount of variation that was (pleasantly) overwhelming.
Like It Takes Two (2021), the game is designed primarily as a two-player cooperative experience.
Electronic Arts
Aesthetically, the sci-fi levels are reminiscent of the neon look of Tron while the fantasy zones look similar to the aesthetic of games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) or Immortals: Fenyx Rising (2020).“Play through the game, and you’ll see there’s so much to it,” Fares explains. “It’s hard to say, ‘Oh, this is from that game or that game. However, we love to give homage to games that we love. So there’s definitely going to be references to [other] games.”
Tackling challenges
In It Takes Two, players were able to find fun mini-games throughout that offered a bit of reprieve from the challenging co-op puzzles. In Split Fiction, the concept is taken one step further with its side stories. Players can find mini-games scattered throughout the game, and they’re thematically opposite of the sci-fi or fantasy tone of the specific level they’re found in. Side stories found in Mio’s sci-fi levels are fantasy-themed, and vice versa.
They’re cleverly narratively integrated into the main story too. In one of Zoe’s fantasy side stories, she explains that the level is one of her leftover ideas from her writing. It’s a gorgeous sand-based desert area inside a giant hourglass, and the girls have to work together to find a way out while avoiding hungry sharks in the sand. One of Mio’s sci-fi side stories was based on a video game she played as a child, which takes inspiration from snowboarding games like the SSX series. In this portion, Mio and Zoe face off in a friendly snowboarding competition to see who can make it to the finish line first.
The aesthetics of the sci-fi levels are reminiscent of the neon look of the Tron movies.
Electronic Arts
Fares says that the most challenging part of making a game with so many unique mechanics is that players expect each of them to feel precise. “[Players] don’t think about this when you snowboard,” he explains. “You’re going to say, ‘This has to feel like a snowboarding game.’ If you like combat, you’re just going to say, ‘I want this to feel like a combat game.’”
It’s easy to prototype a certain mechanic and try it out, but it needs to be taken to a certain level of polish. Most gamers aren’t aware ofhow much work it takes behind the scenes to make these mechanics feel good.
The game has numerous inspirations and wears them lovingly on its sleeve.
Electronic Arts
“Nobody thinks about the amount of time it takes. If you look at a game like Devil May Cry, of course it’s going to feel great. Because that’s the only thing [the developers] have to work on,” he says. “For us, we only work on a mechanic for one level. We have a level where you have combat for like, 10 minutes, and that’s it. But as a player, you expect good combat, you know?”
The Game Awards
Over the past decade, the video game industry has increasingly shifted towards digital showcases instead of in-person expos. Nintendo regularly holds their own “directs,” and Sony has created its own called State of Play. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the transition too. The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was the biggest gaming convention in any given year, and there were plans to bring it back, but the E3 brand was ultimately retired.
Each area has its own unique mechanics, constantly shifting its tone and tempo.
Electronic Arts
Still, Fares sees the value in going to in-person shows, especially the Game Awards, since millions of people watch it. He says that there’s a palpable energy within the room because of the audience.
“It’s way more fun to showcase something where there’s an audience there. It’s different than just having a showcase,” he says. “You want this interaction with them and that’s why I love The Game Awards, because it’s such a great place to show something.”
Earlier this week, Hazelight posted a teaser video for Split Fiction’s announcement at the Game Awards 2024, wherein the developer hyped up the new title., “A lot of people say I’m cocky, but it’s impossible to not be cocky when you have a game like this in front of you,” he says “I’m telling you. You will see what I mean when you play it.” And the bravado might be warranted. After all, It Takes Two did take the title of “game of the year” from a litany of fans and publications.
The developer promises a rich narrative that’s in line with Fares’ previous works like A Way Out (2018).
Electronic Arts
When I tell Fares that I let out a sigh of relief about Split Fiction’s release date, he asks why. I tell him about February’s busy release calendar and all of the games coming out during that month. “Yeah, but they’re not this game,” he jokes. “Every other game should get out of the way of this one.”
Split Fiction is set to release on March 6, 2025, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
