Hazelight’s latest co-operative romp, Split Fiction, is the studio at its best.
Having clearly built upon its spiritual predecessors (A Way Out and game of the year 2021, It Takes Two) — while simultaneously striving to celebrate creative media, the end result is a game that feels magical, weighty, and one that you won’t want to put down. You’ll spend much of the game, right from the very beginning, gasping. Your jaw wide open. You’ll gawp at the locales you’re whisked away to, at just how beautiful they are, and what they inspire. And don’t get me started on the mechanics and the gimmicks.
Let’s start with our protagonists. You’ll be playing as sci-fi author Mio and/or fantasy author Zoe. These two writers, who are both striving to be published in an ever-competitive and cruel world, find themselves taking part in an experiment for Rader Publishing, who vows to break them out of obscurity and get their writing in front of an adoring public. Though, this is an experiment that sees them hopping into dystopian bubble-shaped machines that will extract their ideas directly from their brain. Doesn’t sound fishy at all, does it?
Well, Mio clearly has her suspicions about Rader’s plot is going. As she tries voice her concerns about the experiment, she winds up falling into Zoe’s cosmic, idea-extracting bubble. And that’s where their unconventional friendship — and our co-op journey — begins; the pair need to explore their ideas, and try to find a way to escape with them intact.
The end result is one of Hazelight’s most ambitious games yet, and one of the most ambitious co-op games in years. A fast-paced romp through worlds reminiscent of a mixture of cult-classic media, from literature to movies to video games. One moment, you’re flying through a futuristic world reminiscent of properties like Star Wars, Tron, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Terminator, and the next, you’re thrown into a fantastical setting that’ll quickly remind you of Fable, Prince of Persia, Limbo, and The Legend of Zelda.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Split Fiction’s references to wider pop culture, and at no point does it feel cheesy or distasteful; it feels like a real celebration of the media-at-large and all of the iconic stories told before Zoe and Mio’s. It’s an amalgamation of all the tales that have informed these two author’s writing – and now, our gameplay experience.
And what gameplay that is. Split Fiction elevates the co-op experience to a new level. At times, it feels like you’re playing 10 games in one, seamlessly. It’s like I’ve slipped an R4 card into my Steam library somewhere, and I’m flipping between each game at the speed of light. One moment, you’re a space-faring ninja with an electric whip. Next, you’re a pig who can fly using their own farts. Before long, you are quite literally a hotdog who has to cook itself. It gets weird, okay.
Later, you’re a wizard, a gorilla, a fairy, a dragon-tamer, or a potion seller. At one point, you even get to compete in a snowboarding showdown akin to SSX, and later, much to my excitement, you can become a pinball machine. You’re going to be better at some of these sections than you are others, and this may result in you having one very frustrated partner (I’m sorry for launching you to your death constantly, and I will no doubt do it again).
The game truly shines as it deftly tabs from gimmick to gimmick, all whilst showcasing side stories that you can truly get lost in. During many of these distractions, myself and my partner found ourselves exploring for ages because there is simply so much to interact with and do, and well… there’s also plenty of hidden achievements to accidentally discover, too. And none of this feels like time wasted!
All in all, Split Fiction often feels like an older brother to It Takes Two — and it’s a phenomenal feat in itself to best an award-winning game. Split Fiction has more meat on its bones, a multitude of gameplay styles that pay homage to those before it (and keep you on your toes), and offers more of a challenge to players. Boss fights are better than ever, offering plenty of surprises. In some instances, things get rather dark — the Birthday Cake level that has you re-enacting a dentist-fearing child’s worst nightmares can attest to that.
As level design and boss fights have evolved in Split Fiction, Hazelight’s storytelling has too. It feels more mature here, and despite quite literally not being grounded in reality whatsoever given all the space-faring and wizardry, the over-arching narrative feels incredibly lucid. Hazelight has been able to tread the line between goofy shenanigans and serious storytelling wonderfully in the past, and this only gets better in Split Fiction, providing a game that is a fitting allegory for the politics of AI and the theft of human creativity, while – importantly – not putting a damper on the whole experience.
Ultimately, we not only get an insight into these author’s ideas, but their fears and insecurities as they try to become published, known writers. The trauma that is informing their ideas, lurking deep in their subconscious, manifests delicately and intriguingly as we venture further into their psyche. These are fully fleshed out characters that, much like It Takes Two’s Cody and May, you’ll project yourself onto and become attached to.
Split Fiction, just like Hazelight’s projects before it, will not only have you belly-laughing throughout the experience, reminiscing about games, movies and literature the game regularly reminds you of, but it’ll also tug at your heartstrings and have you wiping tears from your eyes. The game’s biggest victory is that it reminds you that endeavours as wonderful as Split Fiction (and those that it pays homage to) were created by the passion, devotion, and authentic experiences of humans such as Zoe and Mio, and the team over at Hazelight — not idea-extracting machines trained solely for profit off the human ingenuity that’s so rawly at the beating heart of Split Fiction.
Split Fiction was reviewed on PC with a code provided via the publisher.