It’s testament to the untamed – and often unhinged – imagination that zings from Split Fiction like an explosion at Gamescom 2054 that we must open with a disclaimer. No military grade hallucinogens were taken during the making of this review; everything you’re about to read is entirely playable.
Josef Fares’ Stockholm-based Hazelight Studios – specialists in split-screen two player co-op-only adventures which are impossible to play solo unless you’re blessed with about twenty fingers – bagged Game Of The Year in 2021 for their second release It Takes Two, a doll-based divorce romp celebrated for such varied and fantastical gameplay that Fares offered $1,000 for anyone bored by it. Somehow, their third game ups the ante. Split Fiction is a truly head-spinning cornucopia of ideas which manages to be every game you’ve ever played and like nothing you’ve experienced before.
The premise itself cleverly allows for limitless creativity. A megalomaniacal tech bro named Rader invites a group of unpublished fiction writers to try out his new machine, which allows them to live inside their own stories. However, there’s evil afoot as Rader’s new gadget is also designed to suck these plucky creatives dry of inspiration and rule the world of underpaid genre writing like OpenAI with a trust fund.
Two of the group – sci-fi author Mio and fantasy hopeful Zoe – end up falling into the same immersion bubble and, sharing the experience, begin alternating between their very different creations. One chapter, they’re cyber-ninjas zip-wiring and parkour-ing around Blade Runner-inspired cities; the next they’re olde worlde adventurers fighting through a castle overrun with angry trolls – all while the deep emotional roots of their stories slowly unravel and their bond inextricably tightens.
The pace is breakneck, and the two central genres exhaustively explored. Game homages stack up by the minute. In the sci-fi realm, you’ll explore intergalactic prison ships straight out of The Callisto Protocol and play anti-gravity segments so Dead Space you even have health bars down your neck. Fantasy-wise, you’ll make Assassin’s Creed rappel leaps and haystack dives, explore Tomb Raider puzzle caverns, scale Shadow Of The Colossus beasts looking for weak points to stab and find yourself in a haunted sunken city that’s as Elden Ring as they come.
Along the way there are artful 2D platforming segments recalling the likes of Ori And The Will Of The Wisps, Donkey Kong barrels to dodge (in 3D), 8-bit arcade pastiches galore and sections reminiscent of the most elegant top-down RPGs. There’s even an entire pinball level and one section where Hazelight get a heart-in-mouth minigame out of clicking boxes on your phone to prove you’re not a robot. Until they go open-world, every other inch of gaming – often rendered in stunning scenes of futuristic cityscape and mythical mountain vista – is here.
If all this screams ‘derivative’, don’t. Hazelight re-invent and revolutionise each and every format they touch. The 2D interludes might be overused but the inventiveness crammed in utterly justifies them. And if skill trees and XP level-ups are the only major gaming mechanics left out, Split Fiction makes up for it by introducing new powers and abilities for each chapter of the game, making them all instinctive to use and never overplaying them to the point of fatigue.
In the Hopes Of Spring level, for instance, you shape-shift between tree gods, fairies and gorillas, each helping the others through a mystical woodland’s intricate puzzling. Rise Of The Dragon Realm has you nurturing pet dragons from magic-infused eggs to gigantic rideable battle beasts. Later chapters involve the smart manipulation of shield-destroying mines, sorcerers controlling spirit trouts and the world’s most elaborate marble run, where the players operate sentient space balls – one magnetic, the other able to disassemble into a cluster of insect droids. The pace at which these innovations evolve is as breathtaking as the game’s visuals and momentum. No sooner have you discovered that you can inhabit machinery than you’re illuminating your partner’s route, inch-by-inch, through an invisible laser maze that’s as fiendish as it is genius.
The effect is one of imagination running wild, with some of its constantly sparking ideas – the kindly space octopus, the mountain-chopping giants, the monkey conga – significantly madder than others. Occasional side missions inside glowing orbs, representing our heroines’ more off-the-wall stories, are where the developers really cut loose.
One has you playing a pair of teeth bouncing through candyland towards a terrifying appointment with a robot dentist. Another, you’re a couple of pigs – one with propulsive rainbow flatulence, the other a porcine Slinky – en route to becoming playable barbecue hot dogs. The most charming is a pencil sketch fairy story that draws itself as it goes along, and there’s a hilarious half hour to be spent in a mole wizard village, turning each other into chairs and cheese and thunderclouds.
As the final chapter piles meta-concept upon meta-concept, as if courting Christopher Nolan, Split Fiction’s ultimate aim is to explore what a video game can do, both inside and outside the screen. It is gaming incarnate, and 2025 will have to innovate ferociously to better it.
‘Split Fiction’ is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC
VERDICT
By merging the sci-fi and fantasy genres – and tipping its hi-octane hat to a vast range of classic games besides – Split Fiction takes a major shot at being all games to all people. Sci-fi fans get their jet packs, wingsuits, hoverboard races, sand shark rides and adrenaline-fuelled jet-ski escapes. Fantasy freaks can shape-shift, spell-cast and commune with the spirits to their leather-armoured hearts’ content. But Hazelight don’t stop there. Within these endlessly inventive 20+ hours you’ll find yourself playing both ends of a giant, two-headed centipede-cum-water hose. Leading a monkey conga-line for the Elton John of ape kings. Sliding through the guts of a hydra, or down a mountain giant’s inside leg. And far, far more besides.
It’s an incredibly fun game of ideas and possibilities, on both screen and sofa. Because virtually every battle, puzzle and chase sequence requires close collaboration between the differently-attributed characters, the two-player co-op experience becomes one of collaboration and bonding as intense as that between Mio and Zoe. And believe us, this is a brain-frying ride you’ll want to share – not least, come the ultra-meta final throes, to have a witness confirming it’s all actually happening.
PROS
- A non-stop, fast-paced barrage of wild, weird and wonderfully original ideas that makes two-player co-op a collaborative joy
- From a base in homage and familiarity, it stretches the possibilities and twists the very forms of modern video gaming
- Did we mention the monkey conga?
CONS
- A few too many 2D platforming sections
- Some of the final chapter’s best ideas are abandoned too quickly