When It Takes Two won Game of the Year in 2021, it felt like Hazelight Studios had peaked. A small Swedish developer, known primarily for the divisive A Way Out, had produced one of the most joyful co-op experiences in years and taken the industry’s top prize. The reasonable assumption was that following it would be very difficult.

Split Fiction, released in March 2025, answered that assumption decisively.

What It Is

Split Fiction is a two-player co-op game, exclusively. There is no single-player mode. You play as Mio and Zoe, two writers whose stories have been stolen and fused together by a predatory tech company mining creative IP. The premise is thin, but it gives Hazelight license to cycle through wildly different gameplay styles across the game’s eight-to-ten hour runtime.

One chapter is a sci-fi platformer. The next is a fantasy action sequence. There are side paths offering completely self-contained mini-games that are better than many standalone releases. The tonal whiplash is the point: Hazelight is, at its core, a studio that designs variety, and Split Fiction is their most varied game by a distance.

The Co-op Design

The game requires two players, either local or online. Crucially, EA’s Friend’s Pass system means only one player needs to own the game. Your co-op partner can download a free version and play the full game as your guest. At a time when the industry is moving toward charging for multiplayer access, this is worth acknowledging as genuinely good practice.

Each chapter assigns different but complementary mechanics to each player. Mio and Zoe often have different abilities that require coordination to progress, which means the game is fundamentally not the same experience depending on which character you control. Replayability, for those who care about it, is built in.

Cross-play between PC, PS5, and Xbox works without friction, which matters when you are trying to talk a friend who owns a different platform into playing.

How It Was Received

Review scores landed in the high eighties to low nineties across major outlets, with several awarding it full marks. The consensus was that Hazelight had refined everything that made It Takes Two work and built more ambitious set pieces around it. Criticism, where it existed, pointed to the story’s thin characterisation and a finale that does not quite match the best moments of the middle.

Sales figures were not formally announced, but EA confirmed it as one of their best-performing titles of early 2025, which for a game that essentially lets you bring a friend for free is a meaningful commercial result.

Is It Worth Playing Now

Yes. The game has received patches since launch that addressed the handful of technical complaints at release. If you have someone to play it with, it remains one of the best co-op experiences available on any platform. If you do not, it is not for you, and Hazelight are unapologetic about that.

For the price, which has dropped since launch, Split Fiction is straightforwardly one of the best value purchases in gaming right now.