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Fares FairInside Hazelight at the climax of Split Fictions development, you can see how the seeds of a Game of the Year are sown"The games industry shouldnt be only about the money," says Josef Fares, drawing a line in the sand regarding how his studio approaches making games.Image credit: VG247 Article by Alex Donaldson Assistant Editor Published on Feb. 25, 2025 Video games are a business. But theyre also made by, about, and for people. Video games are products. But theyre also art, and I wont hear anyone argue otherwise. This is the complicated and often contradictory paradigm at the root of our medium, and most big-budget modern entertainment forms. How a given production chooses to navigate these choppy waters often defines it.In many of the best cases, the route charted through that contradiction is often most keenly defined by one thing: culture. Thats what Im most curious about when I step into the headquarters of Hazelight Studios, the company behind 2021 Game of the Year and critical darling It Takes Two. What, exactly, is the atmosphere of a studio in the final stages of development on a follow-up to a Game of the Year winner? Whats the secret sauce?To see this content please enable targeting cookies. As I hypothesized, I really do think its about culture. At the risk of sounding like that infamous articles opening paragraph musing on auteur creators, Hazelight is definitely a studio defined by the identity and attitude of its founder, Josef Fares.Fares is a little bit scrappy, with a braggadocious attitude that always manages to land on the charming side of things, rather than the arrogant side. Sitting down to play the studios latest game he pokes his head in, impeccably dressed. Are you ready to blow your f**king mind?! he asks, grinning. This is who he is. This is who Hazelight is. The packed awards wall in the studio lobby serves as a perfect validation of this attitude.At the same time, though, it isnt all about swagger. Nestled in a part of Stockholm, Sweden thats home to several towering office blocks with the names and logos of video game brands emblazoned across their facades in enormous letters (Avalanche Studios and DICE/EA Stockholm are just minutes away), Hazelight is instead tucked away on the top floor of an unassuming office building. A new home acquired around 18 months ago in the wake of the success of It Takes Two, its easy enough once in the building for an experienced eye to tell which floor houses the game developer: its always the one with all the external blinds into communal areas of the building closed. As an industry, we love a bit of secrecy!But I digress. My point is that Hazelights office isnt showy; theres no peacocking here. Its functional, neat, smart, and even a little cozy. It belies a culture that is about more than Fares confident posturing, summed up in his motto of We f**k s**t up without f**king up. Poking around the office one can easily sense that the man has spearheaded a place with a lovely atmosphere. Its this, perhaps, that gives Hazelights games their narrative tradition. These are games about connection, collaboration, and even love. Be that between friends, family, or as in Split Fiction, the bond that can develop between two total strangers in the right circumstances. It takes two... players to play Split Fiction. | Image credit: Hazelight StudiosSome studio visits - and reader, Ive done a lot of them - give little but sanitised office cubicle Severance vibes. Of course, you never can tell what the truth of working in such a place is from a brief visit, no matter how intimate. But what I can say about Hazelight is that it certainly is convincing; it feels genuine. The vibe feels right. Everybody I speak to there seems genuinely thrilled to be involved with the company and its projects.Wandering the studios modest but impressive two-floor space, one gets a sense for who they are. You see the pride and the rebellious spirit pretty much everywhere. Theres a sense of how the studio still sees itself as scrappy, small, and independent. Of all the awards stacked up in the lobby, Im told the favorite is not the 2021 Game Award that was bequeathed in front of tens of millions of viewers, but a small statue of around a third of the size from a publication Ive never heard of.Its a cute and endearing thing, appearing to be hand-moulded out of clay or something. Its delightfully slightly naff, but utterly full of heart. It doesnt surprise me that this is Hazelights favorite - its far more representative of the studios attitude than an expensive, perfect, artisan Hollywood statue.You can of course also see the humor (the location of a stack of communal umbrellas is marked with a photo of Rhianna pinned to the wall), and the cheesy family vibes (the words Have a Haze-tastic day scrawled across a whiteboard, a photo wall packed with snaps of drunken revellers at company parties). Then theres the dedication to punching above the studios 90-person weight class, best exemplified by an in-house mocap studio of impressive scope for an independent, carefully customized to best suit Hazelights co-op design where most cutscenes focus on dual protagonists. And I have to give a special shout out to whoever christened the studio cinema room, naming it after all-timer cinematic genius Neil Breen (IYKYK; real ones know). The protagonists, Mio and Zoe, are named after Fares' kids. | Image credit: Hazelight Studios / Electronic ArtsWe still have this very, like, family friendly feel to it. I mean, youve been in our studio now. You know, someone asked me the other day - whats it like going to work - well, its just so much fun, says Fares when we sit down to talk about his studio, its culture, and the finishing stretch on Split Fiction.People are having fun, laughing, and throwing out ideas. It really is f**king s**t up without f**king up. Its like my saying, but its true.However, we also are a very focused team. We do a lot of crazy s**t, but we also deliver on what were doing. We make sure that we focus on creating that experience that feels very tight, nice, and polished.This is arguably the most important thing. Hazelight, like Fares, is clearly laser focused. Its true that the studio has developed a house style. Expressly, Split Fiction is the same kind of co-op action-adventure game as It Takes Two. But its also wildly different. Its more ambitious, more varied, and honestly more shocking. I dont mean that in a narrative sense - from what Ive seen this seems like a heartwarming tale about two strangers coming together to become friends and learn more about themselves in the process - but mechanically.Despite having now played a much larger chunk of the game, theres not much more to say that I havent said in my previous preview - it surprises, it delights. On a couple of occasions, gameplay mechanics and clever little twists made me laugh out loud in a mixture of joy and incredulous disbelief. Its the formula that Hazelight offered to secure the 2021 Game of the Year gong turned up to 11. Its not a reinvention of the wheel, but within this familiar framework there are perhaps a thousand other very small revolutions going on besides. It feels like the sort of experience for which the phrase more than the sum of its parts may have been invented.I dont think I need to go into more detail, and in a sense nor do I want to. I think its likely to be amazing, and a full review next month will confirm if that is the case or not. But if you want another tidbit, heres one morsel: a sequence involving a mobile phone made me grin from ear to ear in absolute delight. A stupid, throwaway thing - but something Ill remember for a long time to come. This game really is going to take you for a ride (positive). | Image credit: Hazelight StudiosWe want to go the crazy route, grins Fares when I ask him about the frankly ludicrous number of unique mechanics I see displayed across the course of my hands-on.Obviously other studios look at us and what we do and go, youre f**king crazy. In the beginning of my career when I started implementing these sorts of game mechanics for instance in Brothers, theyre like why are we doing this and not reusing it?! In Split Fiction, we have our side stories - those are optional. You can just skip them. A lot of these are crazy set pieces. The cool thing about that is that people ask me, like, How could you put this as side content? What if people miss it? And I say: it doesnt matter. If they find it, its going to be great.This guiding principle is probably the sole thing that will most define Split Fiction. While Hazelights previous games were peppered with gameplay variety, Split Fiction takes things to another level entirely - literally. The game gets its name from how players bounce between two fictional settings - one science fiction, one fantasy. This means that in one level youll be dashing through a cyberpunk dystopia on a Tron-style neo-motorcycle while in the very next you might be a spell-slinging wizard. When you return to sci-fi, this time you might be in a send-up of Contra, rather than returning to the carefully-crafted biking mechanic.Then, in a humorous and entirely optional aside, you might whizz through the life cycle of a pig on a farm - wallowing in mud, farting to perform platform challenges, and ultimately ending up a sizzling sausage on the grill. Your last action in that stage, by the way, is to work with your co-op partner to squeeze ketchup and mustard onto yourselves, then pop yourselves into hot dog buns. Obviously. There arent many games quite like this. The closest comparison in my mind, other than Hazelights own work, is how cheeky adult platformer Conkers Bad Fur Day bounced between platforming, shooting, hoverboarding, and more. But this makes that look like childs play. Theres a lot of throwing stuff away after just one chance encounter - which, as Fares says, isnt strictly common across games as a whole.You know, I think it could be something from my movie background, the studio boss muses, speaking of the fact that before turning to video games he directed and wrote five Swedish-language movies.Even if its a huge, very costly scene Why dont we reuse it? My answer is: if youre watching a movie, and youre seeing this really cool kick-ass scene theyre not going to show it again just because it cost money! Image credit: HazelightThe Matrix only used bullet-time twice, I muse in response. F**king yes, exactly! Fares responds, smacking his hand off his knee. Use it there and thats it. Its more effective. I think sometimes when I see cool stuff in gaming, it actually becomes less cool, because it gets reused too much.I get it. Part of the delight is that none of this stuff outstays its welcome. Split Fiction has a level thats a bit like the Ball-Samus segments of Metroid Prime - and then it becomes a bit like Marble Madness, and then, of all things, one of the boss encounters from Sonic Spinball. In any other game this would be the basis of the entire product. Here its a single level. It feels insane, as Fares admit, but it engenders a magical feeling of discovery with each new level and mechanic.And then theres stuff I cant talk about. A glimpse at one mechanic from the final stages of the game that few outside of Hazelight have yet seen almost melted my brain. It really is a concept - mechanically, technically, and in execution - thatd be the main gimmick of most other games. Here its a grinning sign-off towards the end. But I cant, and wont, spoil it. Coming back to The Matrix, I paraphrase Morpheus to say: you have to see it for yourself.As detailed in my earlier preview of Split Fiction, Split Fiction has created a difficult challenge for Hazelight. But its one that the studio appears to have made look easy, even if it was extremely difficult. For Fares part, he describes balancing out Split Fictions obsession with offering up new ideas and then throwing them out shortly after - while ensuring each feels good and is well-polished - as the hardest thing.Prototyping stuff is quite fast, but taking it to the level where it feels nice - that is the hard part. In a Hazelight game, when you play combat, you expect it to play like a combat game. Its understandable - as a player, they dont think oh, how did they have time for this - they just want to play that game. That makes it harder for us, but we still think its very important to keep the experience fresh and unique. You will surrender yourself to this experience, Fares stakes his reputation on it. | Image credit: HazelightBut somehow, the studio appears to be doing it. Hazelight appears poised to do something that rarely happens in this industry: make a strong case for a repeat of the championship. For my money, at the very least, Split Fiction looks set to be one of the strongest games of the year. For Fares, though he has promotional duties to fulfill, hes confident in what theyve made - and is already itching for the next challenge. He already has his idea for his next game, and while hes clearly not shy of the limelight, putting his voice to trailers and strutting on-stage at events, hes also clearly someone who most relishes the act of making. The promotional stuff is obviously just an obligation.Hazelight seems set for that future, too. During the studio tour I have relative freedom to wander, but a few areas are off-limits as people beaver away on new ideas not quite yet ready for public consumption. And theres one thing Fares rules out changing: the studios size. Having grown from around 60 on It Takes Two to almost 90 for Split Fiction, Fares has a full building, a family feel, and no intention of moving premises. Rather than scale up for a bigger project or worse make cut backs after shipping (as many do), Fares now has a new mission in mind: to maintain Hazelight at its present size.Oh, this is it. Were not going to get any bigger, he says. Thats a line. Weve got some lines Hazelight will not have any microtransactions, nothing - thats not gonna exist in our games. Like, live service games its just not my thing.In perhaps typical fashion, a comment about the nature of his studio and what theyre planning next turns into Fares tilting his gaze towards the ceiling as he considers peers and rivals across the industry - and his greater hopes for video games across the board. In this, I feel we see most clearly his philosophy, and the singular attitude which has so powerfully catapulted this man and his studio to award-winning, critical-darling status.In general, I hope that people just focus on making great games. Thats what people want to see. Dont try to come up with the next big thing or whatever, you know? We can clearly see games that have failed that were trying to become this new thing. Sure, when one hits, it makes you a lot of money - but the games industry shouldnt be only about the money.It should be about creativity as well. Its yin and yang; they should meet in the middle.Split Fiction releases on March 5 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
