Josef Fares is back and so is his penchant for cursing. The director of Hazelight Studios has returned to The Game Awards to debut his next game: Split Fiction.
Split Fiction is a game that feels very much in Hazelight’s wheelhouse. Like It Takes Two and A Way Out before it, Split Fiction is a two-person split-screen co-op game. In it, two game developers have been trapped in a world they created and must play together to escape.
It’s been a quiet but massively successful handful of years for Hazelight Studios. In 2021, it took home Game of the Year for It Takes Two in which two players must work together to overcome the myriad dangers of their home (and their failing marriage) Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-style.
Earlier this year, the studio announced that It Takes Two sold 20 million copies. Polygon did a deep dive into the game’s sales numbers, determining that it sold at an astonishingly consistent and enviable clip of half a million copies per month since its release in March 2021. A truly remarkable feat given the game had very little marketing outside its initial release window and at a time when most consumers’ multiplayer tastes were wrapped up in “forever games” like Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite. With bona fides like that, it’s safe to say folks will be looking at Split Fiction, launching March 6th on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, with great interest.
Ash Parrish
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