Platformer · 2025 · Hazelight Studios · local · online
Split Fiction
Two writers are trapped inside their own stories and can only get out together.
What it is about
Mio writes science fiction, Zoe writes fantasy. Both go to a publisher who would like to make their ideas visible in a machine — and the machine is less interested in showing than in keeping. The two end up inside their own stories and only get out of them together.
What follows is an alternation: a world of neon cities and cyber ninjas, then one of dragons and trolls, then back again. In each you get two different abilities that only amount to something in combination — one slows time while the other jumps, or one holds a door open for the other to shoot through.
You always play on a split screen, online included: you can see what the other is doing the whole time. Short side stories lie around along the way, optional detours that often hold the most playful ideas of all.
Our verdict for couples
It comes from the same people as It Takes Two, and you can tell every minute: no sooner have you worked out how a section functions than it is over and the next one does something entirely different. One moment you are flying dragons, the next you are steering two halves of the same vehicle, and each of you always gets an ability the other one cannot use. The dialogue is something you politely listen past. For a couple something else matters anyway — one copy covers you both: the second person downloads the Friend's Pass, and that holds even if they are sitting two hundred kilometres away in front of a different console.
Pros
- One copy is enough: the Friend's Pass is free and crosses platforms
- Nearly every section brings a new idea
- Every world gives you two new abilities
Cons
- The story falls short of It Takes Two
- Not playable at all without a second person
- A few jumping sections demand timing from both
Suitable from
Casual–Hobby
- Conflict potential
- Spirited
- Cosiness
- Mixed
- When you can stop
- After 15 minutes
- How long it lasts
- 5–15 hours
What other co-op fans say
One word stands above all others in the community: inventiveness. Again and again people describe how nearly every section introduces an idea and then lets it go rather than stretching it out — and how that is what carries the length. The Friend's Pass gets praised outright strikingly often: that one copy covers two people, and that it even reaches across platforms, is worth a line of its own to many. The recurring objection concerns the story. Those who know It Takes Two consider the writing and dialogue the weaker part here; about the playing itself, almost nobody writes against it.
- “This Co-op game is an absolute treasure, and I can't recommend it enough.”
- “There is an almost ridiculous amount of creativity packed into it.”
- “The story is bland, and the dialogue feels stiff and clichéd at times.”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
If you like this one
Runs on the same devices as this game.
Two yarn figures, joined by a single thread, climb together through a warmly lit world.
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Three heroes — a wizard, a thief and a knight — and puzzle after puzzle that gets easier with two.
A tiny blocky platformer that gets past not one single level without you two talking.