Dear Hazelight, I Have An Awesome Idea For Your Next Game

Spoiler Warning For Split Fiction

It’s hard to tell what Hazelight will do next after Split Fiction. Launching this week, the stellar experience feels like the logical end of the developer’s couch co-op journey. I imagine it will always be a part of the identity of everything it makes from here on out, but after taking you on a journey that spans genres and explores the importance of telling our own stories, what comes next needs to push the boat out further than ever. How is that even possible?

Not knowing the answer to that question is what makes the future of Hazelight so exciting. After touching on losing a parent, escaping a prison, and navigating a divorce, it feels like the studio has explored all the obvious concepts that could underpin a couch co-op epic, but I know it’s smart enough to surprise us with a scenario we couldn’t think up in our very wildest dreams. In fact, I came up with one when discussing my review with Eric Switzer.

How Is Hazelight Going To Top Split Fiction?

Split Fiction is so wonderful because, when presented with its premise, it’s hard to believe nobody has ever thought of it before. Hurling two leads into a simulation representing two genres and giving the player constant opportunities to switch between them is a scenario you’d expect to see unfold in a Saturday morning cartoon, but here it is morphed into a heartfelt adventure where unexpected gameplay innovations are introduced at every turn.

However, many of these ideas fail to live up to the creativity of It Takes Two, with core parts of certain levels outstaying their welcome or leading to narrative crescendos that don’t hold water. I still massively enjoyed my time with it, but at times the premise doesn’t push itself far enough or the hokey writing at its centre holds it back. It’s a game that is well worth playing and one that captures all the mechanical and visual whimsy that Hazelight has become known for, but I would keep some of these concessions in mind. Anyway, onto my super-cool idea.

Lucky For You, I Know Exactly How

Hazelight has always excelled by introducing a simple yet effective premise that it builds on consistently throughout the entire runtime. My game follows either two elderly siblings or an old married couple – obviously the narrative will change depending on who ends up being the focus – as one reminisces about life on the day of the other’s funeral. A moment to not only say goodbye, but think about the incredible lives they have lived, the experiences they have had, the people they’ve met, but most importantly, everything they’ve been through together.

While one of the player characters begins the game in a coffin as friends and family mourn their passing, once the introduction is out of the way, we suddenly find ourselves playing not as aging adults, but younger versions of both characters. I take it back, siblings definitely work better for this. From here, the game consists of major moments from both of their lives as they go through them together, alone, or with other people they care deeply about.

I grew up in a family with nine siblings, three of whom are pretty close to me in age. But in a family that sprawling you have brothers and sisters at drastically different points in life. By the time I started secondary school, my eldest brother was already settling down with his first kid, and as I finished university he was ready to surrender his last breath to terminal cancer and change our family dynamic forever.

He was a person I admired, but also someone I long feared it would be impossible to live up to. If this game were to mimic such a bond, it is not only a journey of reaching for the impossible and living up to expectations, but figuring out how to live your life once those goals suddenly don’t exist anymore.

Hazelight Should Play To Its Biggest Strengths

It’d be terrific to see a relationship like this play out over the course of a co-op video game by Hazelight, where, instead of jumping between different genres in a marvelous simulation, you step into the shoes of two people who have experienced the same lives from different perspectives.

Things would end in death and reunion, but there would be beauty in this emotional resolution with both players spending the entire game getting to know these characters, going through moments of both hardship and relaxation, all before arriving at the crossroads of mortality. Most people are going to play through these games with loved ones, so exploring a narrative that makes them think about their own relationships and place in life would be bold yet reasonable.

Obviously, playing two different characters through the key points in their life together is going to be pretty boring in isolation. The last thing you want is to spend 12 hours in a bland office job while the other character toils away as an English teacher.

Like What Remains of Edith Finch or even the level-based A Way Out, there is an opportunity here to do some fantastic and groundbreaking things in service of a heartwarming narrative. Maybe it takes place in the future where you go to some ridiculous places, only to take joy in oddly quiet moments where all you need to do is wash up dishes or play catch in the back garden.

Hazelight has built a reputation on co-op adventures that are high-octane and difficult to predict, often throwing players into extraordinary predicaments with gameplay mechanics that are impossible to predict. But A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction began with simple ideas that bloomed into something special, and that could be the case here.

Consider it a modern retelling of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons but with spoken dialogue, a modern or futuristic setting, and a more nuanced glimpse at how this familial relationship is capable of breaking hearts as well as mending them. I also have a couple of cool endings in mind, so I promise this idea is going somewhere. Eventually…

Action

Adventure

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

Released

March 6, 2025

ESRB

T For Teen // Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Language, Violence