It should come as no surprise to anyone that Split Fiction, the new game from It Takes Two studio Hazelight, is doing well, but it's doing really well, launching with over 1,000 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam.
Split Fiction follows two women trapped in virtual worlds of their own creation. Both writers, one prefers fantasy and the other loves sci-fi, and the pair have to venture through what each other's minds have conjured up.
It's the fourth game from Hazelight, the team that brought us Game of the Year winner It Takes Two, the emotional Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and co-op prison escape game A Way Out, so a certain degree of quality was always expected, but this level of critical and fan-acclaim is still wonderful to see. It's the highest rated game on Metacritic so far this year.
Our Split Fiction review says it "Cements Hazelight as the master of co-op games." A Steam reviewer calls it "By far the best couch co-op game ever made. It's packed with surprisingly fresh design for the industry." Another writes: "It's so refreshing to see a studio that has a clear vision that prioritizes making great games instead of trying to nickel and dime their customers. God bless Hazelight for keeping co-op alive."
People seem to be really happy with the way Hazelight has handled the game, as another reviewer writes: "In an era where split screen gaming has taken a backseat, the legends at Hazelight Studios continue to break expectations and push the bar in a field they continue to dominate, while taking a stance against corpo overlords and the demand for monetisation."
Somehow, Hazelight has made it so that anyone who buys a copy of Split Fiction can give a friend pass to a pal on any other platform. This means you could get it on PC and a friend on PS5 could play with you, for free. Creative director Josef Fares also still hates microtransactions and thinks they're "a huge problem and it's stopping our industry from a creative perspective." It's good to see the game is succeeding while trying to break free of a lot of the anti-consumer practises that have been wreaking havoc on the industry for so long.
I can't wait to play it with my partner. We've been slowly working our way through It Takes Two, but we decided to binge Severance so it took a backseat. I love sci-fi and she loves fantasy, so Split Fiction seems like the perfect game for us.
If you're hungry for some more fun with friends, check out our list of the best co-op games you can play right now.
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