After completing It Takes Two with my friend, we were thrilled to hear that Hazelight Studios was coming out with their newest game, Split Fiction. Hazelight Studios did not disappoint. This game was simply made to just be fun. In a world where games are riddled with micro transactions and are clear cash grabs, it is always refreshing playing a game that you can simply just buy and play without interruptions or battle passes. Similar to It Takes Two and A Way Out, Split Fiction only requires one person to purchase the game and the other player can simply join in via a friend pass. The fact that Hazelight Studios continues to do this despite being able to have both players pay for the game has always a green flag in my book.
In some ways, my friend and I thought that the characters that we got to play were good matches for our own personalities. I played as Zoe and my friend played as Mio.
Zoe carries herself as kind, charismatic, and sociable while Mio is more closed off, cautious, and misunderstood. The game starts off at a corporate building where Zoe and Mio were invited along with other aspiring authors hoping to catch their big publication debut. The building is equipped with machines that generate orbs that were built for a single person to step into and from there, the authors can walk into their minds and get to actually interact with the worlds that they built in their heads. Seems cool, right? Mio felt that the vibes were off right away but without spoiling too much, she refused to take part in entering her orb and ending up falling into Zoe’s orb. That is where Split Fiction gets its name. The game alters between Zoe and Mio’s worlds and the only way they can escape is by finding glitches that bounce them back and forth between visually-stunning sci-fi and fantasy worlds.
Split Fiction is jam packed with varying genres to play through as you progress through the game. Each level is completely different from the next one. I will say that some levels are definitely harder than others. For example, in one of Zoe’s worlds, we get to ride dragons that are unique in their own ways.
While in Mio’s world, one of the players can play as a magnetic ball
When playing Split Fiction, we had our “wow” moments because the settings of the worlds that we went to were visually striking. My personal favorite is the cyberpunk city that we got to take in while playing in a sidescroller format.
Hazelight Studios definitely knew what they were doing because they left so many benches and areas for you to just sit back and take in the sights. Like here:
And here:
And here:
The game is more than just the stories they wrote though. It is what the stories mean at a deeper, subconscious level. The two must witness, confront, and unravel their complicated pasts from the real world that ended up bleeding into their stories in order to leave their simulations. BUT looking through an even wider lens, this game also has a lot of metaphors of money hungry corporations who just want to steal ideas rather than create good content themselves. This can be observed when it is revealed that the people who invited all of these authors in are basically just that. So while Mio and Zoe are helping each other learn about themselves and undergoing varying challenges across story genres, there is a cash hungry corporate overlord who is very upset at us for interrupting his plans to get rich quick off of other people’s work and is willing to stop at nothing to get what he wants.
If you are still on the fence about picking up a copy, here’s a few things to know:
– Online and Local Cooperative
– Space Required: 87.6gb
– Easy to learn. You are basically given three things to master which are jump, double jump, and dash. Those will be your bread and butter for the game.
– Good story
– Including side stories, it took us 18.1 hours to get to the ending
I had a lot of fun playing this game (well, a series of mini games that made this one large game) and enjoyed the story. It is definitely worth playing if you can find someone to play with. There aren’t many cons to the game. The only ones I can think of is that sometimes our game connection would randomly kick us out of our server despite not having internet issues, some of the challenges felt too easy/forgiving, and the audio quality of the boss fights would decrease (my friend describes it as if the bosses are speaking out of a tin can). Regarding some parts of the game feeling too easy, this can be because this game is intended to be more accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike. It’s not deal breaking at all though. It is evident that Split Fiction was made with a lot of love and effort and I got to tip my hat to Hazelight Studios for another banger. Looking forward to the next one!
