Which Hazelight Studios Game Is The Best?

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home March 11, 2025 37 Views 9 Min Read
Which Hazelight Studios Game Is The Best?



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In spite of only having a handful of games underits belt, it’s impressive to see how much Hazelight Studios has achieved in such a short time. Part of what has made the developer stand out so much is the team’s dedication to creating high-quality, exclusively multiplayer experiences.

Collage with Split Fiction, Grow Home, and Meowser.

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While you might think that this limits the audience of its games, it instead uplifts its titles as some of the best in what has become a pretty one-sided competition. What’s more impressive is to see how the studio has managed to maintain consistent quality, but what is the studio’s best game?

Honourable Mention – Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons

While Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is technically not a Hazelight game, you can definitely see how it laid the foundations for what would go on to be its signature style. Even though Brothers was developed by Starbreeze Studios (most well-known for the Payday series), the game was directed by Josef Fares, who would go on to found Hazelight Studios, and he also brought a lot of his team from Brothers on to join his new studio too.

What makes Brothers stand out the most from the other Hazelight Studios games is that it wasn’t created with multiplayer in mind. The two brothers are controlled with one joystick each, with the matching trigger used to interact with the environment.

The gameplay style feels similar to games like Astral Chain or Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, but unlike those games, it has much less time to stretch its legs, being only about three hours long. Even though it wasn’t how the game was originally intended to be played, multiplayer is now an option with its 2024 remake, but it can feel a little awkward at times given that it’s not how the game was designed.

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A Way Out

While Hazelight’s first official game is unfortunately its weakest, it’s still plenty of fun to return to if you’re looking for something similar, but not completely the same as its later games. A Way Out’s biggest strength is its narrative, but how invested you’ll be will depend on your mileage with the characters, and your patience for some of its slower moments.

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9-Split Fiction Every Chapter Ranked

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In spite of being only about five to six hours long, A Way Out can end up feeling a lot slower than other Hazelight games given how little its gameplay switches up throughout its entire run. Instead of giving you new mechanics to play with in each chapter, you’ll instead have small sections or minigames where things will change, but these unfortunately don’t last long. The best gameplay moments are in its various chase sequences, so it’s a shame that there are only a handful of these.

With how wildly different in tone it is to anything Hazelight has made since, it’s perfect to play if you want a short palette cleanser with your player two. Just make sure to avoid any spoilers before doing your pre-playthrough research, since you’ll have the best experience going in blind

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It Takes Two

It’s no wonder that It Takes Two has managed to maintain such a strong following and level of popularity since its launch in 2021, since it’s such a fun game to go back to, and was a perfect example of what Hazelight does best. What makes It Takes Two so enjoyable is that, even though you’re working together with your partner, you’re rarely doing the same thing, but you’re still actively co-operating.

This aspect of asymmetrical gameplay is what Hazelight does best, and for a game like It Takes Two, it essentially doubles the playtime, since you’ll likely want to go back and see what it’s like to play as the other character.

You can tell as you traverse the levels that Hazelight was having fun with designing the settings for each of its massive levels, and they’re all packed with details that you can easily miss, but that just makes them all the more satisfying to discover.

Slopes of War and Notebook Side Stories collage from Split Fiction

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Split Fiction: Every Side Story, Ranked

Side Stories are smaller adventures Mio and Zoe can go on in Split Fiction, delving into their previous writings to craft new adventures.

The main weakness of It Takes Two will really depend on the person, since the patience you have for Cody and May will depend highly on your taste. Their bickering and lack of communication, especially in the early-game, can be grating, but even so, the presentation and gameplay are so charming and whimsical that it’s easy to ignore.

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Split Fiction

It’s rewarding to see that Hazelight Studios has only gotten better at its craft with time, as Split Fiction truly feels like the final evolution of its design formula. Mio and Zoe’s adventure shamelessly borrows what worked well in It Takes Two, and with an impressive level of reflection, manages to fix the tiny mistakes that held back the previous game from perfection.

Thanks to the open-ended theme of different stories, there are no design limits on the worlds you explore, and each setting feels a step above the typical video game environments you’re used to exploring. These work in conjunction with the side stories, that not only change up the gameplay to keep it fresh, but also serve the pacing of the overall adventure perfectly.

While narrative appreciation is subjective, Mio and Zoe feel like Hazelight’s best protagonists yet, with their individual development being believable, and their joint dynamic shifting in a way that’s satisfying to watch. Even though there are some small issues, it’s hard to see how Hazelight will manage to top this.

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