STACK #245 March 2025

GAMING FEATURE

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Hazelight moments With pigs becoming sausages, monkey dance battles, fighting bad kitties, riding sharks, and more wonderfully bonkers scenarios, there are all manner of wild imaginings at play in Split Fiction . We asked Josef where such ideas spring from… “Well, at Hazelight we are creatively totally free. You know, we do kind of whatever we want, and we go crazy. And we try to find new exciting scenarios that fit the story in the gameplay. “And those things that you talk of, these are what we call ‘Hazelite moments’. They’re in all our games even from the beginning of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons , and A Way Out , and It Takes Two , and so will they be in Split Fiction . We love those moments.”

TWO WORLDS

Lovers of co-op games rejoice, for Split Fiction is with us this month.We chatted with Hazelight Studios director Josef Fares about their latest slice of pure imagination. Words Amy Flower A s we’ve come to expect from Hazelight, even the story setup delivers a wealth of creativity. “ Split Fiction is about these two writers,”

and the gameplay and the worlds and everything that was needed. It's really hard to pull off in this amount of time what we have done. But I'm really proud and

• Split Fiction is out Mar 6

happy that we figured it out.” With the collision of fantasy

and sci-fi stories, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there were existing pop culture IPs providing inspiration. But the story is actually quite unique. “When the idea came up, we thought that there was a lot out there that was similar to this,” muses Josef. “But looking at it, we didn't find any movies or TV shows that were exactly this - jumping between sci-fi and fantasy. You have where you jump between parallel universes and stuff, but not this actual combination. “So, in a sense that makes Split Fiction even more unique. But, of course, there are inspirations from movies and games out there. We also have a lot of references in the game here and there. So, I think it's fun for the players to see and explore that.” The Friend’s Pass returns, allowing two people to hook up remotely and, as long as one owns the game, dive right in. It’s a surprisingly generous mechanism. “Why Friend's Pass came is because it made sense. The whole idea was if you're playing the game with your friend on the couch and you want to continue playing it online, why should you pay for two copies? It doesn't make sense. “If you play, you should be able to play, and that's why we created Friends Pass, to make sure that two players can play with one copy. And in the beginning, as always, we were like, ‘Will this work, not work? But it didn't matter. I totally think that if you come from a good place, it will land with the player in a good way.”

explains Josef, “and there's this tech company that can simulate the stories of life. They get there in hope of getting published, but they accidentally end up in the same simulation and, once they're there, they realise that this big tech company is actually about to steal their ideas. “So, they need to work together to escape the simulation. However, they're two entirely different people, with two entirely different genres - they don't even like the others’ genres. So, this is pretty much a game about friendship. It's a buddy movie you could say, about two entirely different people that find each other in this story.” Hazelight have really made a name by crafting incredibly engaging co-op games. But in the beginning, did they know that the format would prove as popular as it’s been? “Well, not at all,” says Josef, with a grin. “I

mean, the whole idea with A Way Out was that started with me and a friend trying to find a co op game that wasn't just drop in/drop out. We wanted to play a game that was two characters following stories that are different, that are unique. “I had no clue. Nobody had a clue that it was going to be such a huge success. But at the end of the day, it's about making the games we want to play. And from that, actually because of that, when you believe in what you want to play, I think that resonates with players out there.” Rather than trying to emulate the successful It Takes Two , Hazelight have taken the more challenging route of creating something new and different. It all goes back to their love of the new. “At Hazelight, we love to test something new, and the whole idea started with the sci-fi and fantasy and jumping between them,” reveals Josef. “That felt very intriguing and challenging. And that was obviously one of the hardest things at Hazelight when we created Split Fiction , the variety of the game mechanics

46 MARCH 2025

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