Split Fiction is a genre-mixing evolution of the It Takes Two formula

Film director Josef Fares has been enjoying success in the video game business for more than a decade. His development house, Hazelight Studios, is coming off of its most successful effort yet with 2021's heavily praised It Takes Two. It's hard to imagine the team putting together an even more intense cooperative gaming experience, but it appears to have done just that. Hazelight's next project goes even farther into the realm of co-op gaming with a story that sees science fiction and fantasy clash. It's called Split Fiction.

Revealed earlier tonight at The Game Awards, Split Fiction tells the story of Mio and Zoe, two aspiring writers who are looking to publish two very different kinds of stories. They meet with a publisher who hooks them into a machine designed to bring them into virtual worlds designed around their stories. However, one of them discovers that there's something sinister at work. It turns out that the machine has placed them in their ideal worlds, but is also stealing their creative ideas. When one of the writers try to leave the machine, they collide with the other's world and bring their two wildly different tales together.

Split Fiction's two main leads, Mio and Zoe, are inspired by Fares' own two daughters. Like It Takes Two's bickering leads, Cody and May, they're seemingly two characters at odds, but need to band together to survive whatever's going on with this machine that's designed to steal their ideas. Through their trials together, they discover that even through their vastly different tastes in fiction, they're still able to form a new friendship.

Like It Takes Two, Split Fiction is only playable as a co-op experience, whether it's local or online. Friends will venture to various stages that bounce back and forth between the sci-fi futuristic cityscape of Mio's story and the fantasy realm of Zoe's. Each of the worlds will operate with different rules, put the main characters in different outfits, and grant them different mechanics. Primarily, the game is a puzzle platformer with moments of fast-paced action, but don't expect this game to get very repetitive. Hazelight is incorporating numerous ideas to keep friends entertained.

As one might imagine, teamwork is essential in Split Fiction. Players can follow different paths, hit different switches, and help open doors or move platforms for their partner. However, that's just the beginning and the experience will vary depending on whose story is being told at that moment. Mio's story, for example, will feature action sequences, on-rails sequences, and sections involving Metroid Prime-style drone suits that perform different functions for each player. Zoe's story, meanwhile, will focus on magic spells, magic spells involving transforming into different creatures, and raising dragons from the moment they're hatched.

While it's possible to bolt through Split Fiction's story from start to finish, Hazelight wants to reward players with unique experiences that can only be accessed through the game's side levels. Many of these side stages will feature settings and mechanics that aren't found anywhere in the game. For example, one of Zoe's stages will see both characters transformed into pigs. To reach the end, they'll have to leap across platforms. Of course, pigs don't fly. Well, they don't fly unless they blow rocket propulsion-style flatulence, which is what players will be doing. Another section takes players down an icy mountain in Mio's story, where both players must obviously look to survive, but they can also take part in a friendly competition to see who racks up the highest score by chaining together combos like in a Tony Hawk game.

Hazelight has been hard at work on Split Fiction and while the game is being revealed for the first time at The Game Awards, the story is just about finished. In fact, Fares gave Shacknews (both myself and Head of Video Greg Burke) a glimpse of the game's final level and we can say nothing else other than it blew us away. Under penalty of being subjected to Fares' lethal heat vision (which we're not sure he actually has, but we're not about to take any chances), this is all that we are allowed to say about it. Fortunately, players won't have to wait too long to get their hands on the game. Split Fiction is set to release on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with crossplay available, on Thursday, March 6. It will sell for $49.99 USD, but since it's a co-op only game, those who purchase it will receive a Friend's Pass that they can hand off to a friend. Keep it on Shacknews, because after trying Split Fiction out, we had a chance to ask Fares more about it. That interview is up now on the Shacknews Interviews YouTube channel.

This preview is based on an early PC version played cooperatively with Game Director Josef Fares at a private press briefing. The final product is subject to change.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?