Hazelight unveils Joseph Fares’ Split Fiction co-op buddy adventure that blends sci-fi and fantasy

Electronic Arts and Hazelight Studios have been revealed Split imaginationan action-adventure game that pushes the boundaries of the cooperative genre further than ever before.

Developed by Hazelight Studios, the creative minds behind the 2021 Game of the Year winner with over 20 million units sold worldwide, It takes twocomes a unique split-screen co-op game full of action and adventure, where players will move between the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy. I think it looks amazing.

The game revolves around two writers, Mio and Zoe, one of whom writes a science fiction story and the other writes a fantasy story. They are thrown into a simulation that keeps transporting them back and forth between worlds. Players will play as either character, with the split screen showing a sci-fi world on one side and a fantasy world on the other at different times during the game.

With a wide range of ever-changing abilities, players will take on the roles of Mio and Zoe (named after the Faris children, who were in the audience) as they work together to reclaim their creative heritage and discover an unexpected power. Friendship.

“At Hazelight, we’ve been building co-op games for 10 years, and with every game we go beyond what players expect from action-adventure co-op games. I’m very proud of what we’ve built with Split Fiction. Let me tell you guys, we will It blows your mind.’ “Because Mio and Zoe jump back and forth between the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy, they get to do some really weird things with their gameplay and storytelling. This is definitely our most epic co-op adventure yet.

Knight showed me the match behind closed doors and I asked him about it. He said the team had been working on the game for 3.5 years, starting right after finishing It Takes Two, which was a two-player split-screen co-op game. He said that the team has become comfortable making such games and is happy that no one else is making these kind of titles anymore.

“They meet a new technology company that can replicate their stories in real life. They are amateur writers with hopes of getting their stories published. But once they get there, things go a little sideways, and they get stuck in the same simulation. They are complete strangers,” Fares told me. “They don’t know each other. It’s kind of a buddy movie, you could say. It’s about two complete strangers who end up in the same simulation. But the problem is that one of them writes science fiction, while the other writes fantasy. So you will jump between fantasy level and science fiction level and play their own written stories.

In Split Fiction, players will discover a variety of sci-fi and fantasy mechanics and abilities. Escape from the sun
This is supernova, challenge the monkey to a dance battle, try some cool tricks, fight
An evil cat and ride everything from gravity bikes to sand sharks. With completely different worlds
From each other, surprising challenges await players at every turn.

Mio and Zoe are two contrasting writers, one science fiction and one fantasy, who become trapped in their own trap.
Their own stories after being plugged into a machine designed to steal their creative ideas. Jump back and
Between worlds, they will have to work together and master a variety of abilities in order to break free while keeping their memories intact. They go back and forth in each other’s worlds, as something goes wrong with the publisher’s simulation. Much of the dynamic between Mio and Zoe is tense, unlike the fight between the husband and wife characters in It Takes Two.

“Great friendships and memories are created by playing amazing co-op games together – and no one else
“It’s better than Hazelight,” Jeff Gammon, managing director of EA Partners, said in a statement. “We are excited to continue our long-standing partnership with Joseph and his talented team to bring another innovative co-op adventure to life; a game that continues to push boundaries and redefine what players can experience together on and off the screen.”

One of Hazelight Studios’ core features is the Friend’s Pass, which allows one player who owns the game to invite a friend
Your friend is back to playing for free, and it’s been taken even further with cross-play options enabled on PlayStation.
Xbox and PC via Steam.

Split Fiction releases on March 6, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series
Game Store and EA App for $49.99.

Makers of 2021 Game of the Year, It Takes Two, Hazelight is a multi-award winning indie game
Game development studio based in Stockholm, Sweden. It was founded in 2014 by Fares, a film director
and creator of the critically acclaimed game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Hazlight is committed to
Pushing the creative boundaries of what’s possible in gaming. In 2018, Hazelight released A Way Out
The first third-person co-op action-adventure only, as part of the EA Originals program.

My interview with Fares

When asked why he was teaming up with EA Originals again, Fares said it has worked very well so far, as EA has such a wide reach.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said.

In the tutorial, you are able to learn quickly. In the demo of the game, I saw that much of the interaction was color-coded. If there was a purple RB, it was for Mio so I had to hit the right bumper on my controller to use my grappling hook to fly through space quickly. If it was green, the other player, Knight in this case, was supposed to use their controller to convince Zoe to do something. You can run on walls like in Titanfall, and you can jump on rails and slide like in It Takes Two.

What was exceptional was the 60fps performance. Even though the game is split screen, it wasn’t slow. In split-screen games, the display can be choppy because two different scenes must be displayed at the same time. But in this case, the game moved quickly — which is important because it’s an action game. You do things like mash buttons or switch tracks to avoid disaster.

Fares said the team had become adept at creating co-op and split-screen games, and they were able to do the more challenging task of maintaining high performance while balancing that with how good everything was. For me, the graphics were very rich, as both worlds are beautiful.

It’s cute too. There are many side quests and there is one where the writers turn into pigs. One moves forward on the force of the fart. Their abilities are always so different that they have to work together to solve problems in the world, even if they annoy each other. In one part, Zoe had to distract some sandworms that wanted to eat anyone in the sand while Mew had to run across an expanse of sand. I turned into a big gorilla in the sci-fi world and turned myself into a big fish in some parts to progress through the landscape. When you switch between worlds, your clothes change to fit the theme.

There’s an “unfinished” level by one of the writers that becomes a place where you can surf on the sand like in the old SSX snowboarding games. The entire time I played the demo for the first time, I was pretty much able to keep up with Knight, who has played it several times. This speaks to the intuitiveness of play.

Hazelight has managed to achieve this by growing from just 60 people on It Takes Two to around 80 people on Split Fiction.

When asked how Fares’ team came up with the crazy ideas for the game, he said, “At Hazelight, we mess around without messing up.”

The game will likely take around 15 hours, and is built on Unreal Engine 5.

As for playing other types of games, Fares said he was not attracted to any of the trends in gaming, such as blockchain, the metaverse, AI, and live services.

“Fuck that. This isn’t my thing. No way,” he said.