Split Fiction is the new co-op game from Josef Fares – and he only used a few rude words to announce it

If there’s one thing we can expect from The Game Awards, it’s Josef Fares appearing at some point and using a lot of words that would normally be bleeped out by other game awards. However, Geoff’s show lets people be themselves, which is nice, especially if you’re Josef Fares. He was rightly hyped up though, as his new title, Split Fiction, looks like a hell of a lot of co-op fun.

Josef Fares, and the team at Hazelight Studios, are best known for crafting some of the most compelling and downright fun co-op games of the last few years, with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, A Way Out and It Takes Two all selling themselves on playing with someone else. That ethos carries on with Split Fiction, an all new game that splits sci-fi and fantasy.

Split Fiction sees you and a friend take control of Mio and Zoe – named after Fares two daughters – as two aspiring writers who are seemingly conned into feeding their stories into an evil AI machine. While AI stealing human beings content is worryingly close to reality, the game sees Mio and Zoe pulled into the machine, and their two stories, one fantasy and one sci-fi mixed and merged, with the duo jumping between the two from level to level.

Fares showed that each level will introduce new mechanics, and focussed in on one particularly cool implementation in the fantasy setting where you raise a pair of baby dragons. At first, they attach themselves to your back, their tiny wings helping you to leap further and glide down from great heights. As you progress they grow, becoming more powerful and walking around levels like small scaly tanks. In their final form, Zoe and Mio can ride atop them, with the game shifting to a Panzer Dragoon/Century-styled section.

Hopefully, that level of imagination and innovation can carry through into every level, and we won’t have all that long to find out, since the game is set for release on the 6th of March 2025, for PS4/5, Xbox platforms and PC.