Split Fiction
Every level in this co-op action adventure is built around two players who each hold half of the solution. As science fiction author Mio and fantasy author Zoe, you platform and fight through worlds lifted straight from their imaginations, with puzzles in between. The screen is split down the middle, and the divider shifts as the story develops.
Split Fiction was released on March 6, 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version following on June 5, 2025. Hazelight Studios developed it and Electronic Arts published it.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
A new toolset every chapter
Neon Revenge turns the pair into cyber ninjas: one carries a sword, the other a gravity whip that moves objects around the arena. Hopes of Spring replaces that kit with a fantasy realm where Zoe flies as a fairy and coaxes plants to grow as a tree. Each stage introduces a mechanic of its own.
Failure costs very little
Retries are cheap:
- Checkpoints land frequently, boss fights included.
- If one player falls, the other can bring them back into play within seconds, as long as the partner is still alive.
- Settings include remappable controls and damage modifiers, plus simplified inputs for the more complex sequences.
Reviews back it up
Metacritic lists the PC version at 90 and the PS5 version at 91, and 98% of critics on OpenCritic recommend it. GameSpot and Push Square each awarded 10/10, IGN gave 9/10 and Eurogamer 5/5.
Story and Lore
Zoe Foster writes fantasy and hopes for a publishing deal. Mio Hudson writes science fiction and is mostly there for the payout. Rader Publishing invites both of them, plus four other writers, to test an experimental simulation device that lets authors live inside the stories they submit. Mio grows suspicious, tries to back out and ends up tumbling into Zoe's bubble. The machine was never meant to hold two people in one bubble, and the resulting glitch tears holes between a sci-fi world and a fantasy one.
Getting out means finding more glitches, which means moving through both imaginations in turn. Rader, who runs the company, has no intention of shutting the system down because the ideas it produces are too valuable to lose. The machine also reaches past the submitted stories into half-finished ideas and old memories. The side stories draw on that material: they are drafts the two women wrote when they were younger.
The campaign moves through eight chapters:
- Rader Publishing: the setup and the first glitch.
- Neon Revenge: Mio's cyberpunk city, with a megacorp to take down.
- Hopes of Spring: Zoe's fantasy world, ending in the Halls of Ice.
- Final Dawn: a sci-fi infiltration of a factory that produces hazardous chemicals.
- Rise of the Dragon Realm: a return to fantasy, with dragons.
- Isolation: a prison ship and a confrontation with Dark Mio.
- The Hollow: a ghost town and a hydra.
- Split: the showdown with Rader.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Play stays on a split screen even online. At the start the divider confines each player to a narrow view of their half of the level. As the story picks up, the boundary loosens and starts to move, and later sections let players jump from one half of the screen to the other.
Mio and Zoe share a small base set of moves: jumping and dashing, plus swinging. Everything beyond that is handed out per stage, and the two kits are designed so that neither clears a section alone. One level turns the pair into a pinball machine, with one player working the flippers while the other is the ball. Boss fights are built from the mechanics of the level that precedes them. Roles can be swapped from the main menu for a second run.
Side stories sit behind portals in chapters 2 to 5, three per chapter, and each brings its own mechanic. A few examples:
- Riding giant sandfish across a desert in a world trapped inside an hourglass.
- Playing as pigs, then as sausages that have to cook themselves.
- Water-skiing behind a moving train.
- Racing to escape a collapsing star.
Characters and Factions
- Mio Hudson writes science fiction. She is guarded, mostly in it for the payout, and inclined to shut out her emotions while looking after her ailing father. Kaja Chan voices her.
- Zoe Foster, a fantasy writer and countryside optimist, is desperate to show her family she is not a failure. Played by Elsie Bennett.
- J.D. Rader runs Rader Publishing and the machine behind the experiment. Ben Turner provides his voice.
- Dark Mio, a boss encounter, personifies Mio's suppressed negative emotions. Chan voices this role as well.
Director Josef Fares named both leads after his daughters.
The main organization in the story is Rader Publishing. Rader answers to a board of superiors and leans on a team of technicians, among them Julia (Nneka Okoye) and Harry, who work to keep the simulation stable and grow uneasy at the lengths their boss will go to. Inside the stories themselves, the cast turns stranger: an Ice King, a Monkey King and a pair of centipedes who are Zoe's parents.
Editions
There is a single version of the game and no Deluxe or Premium tier. The Steam listing carries one piece of DLC, and it is music:
- Split Fiction: the complete game.
- Split Fiction – Original Soundtrack: the score by Gustaf Grefberg and Jonatan Järpehag, sold separately.
- Game & Soundtrack Bundle: both items in one purchase.
On PC the game is available through Steam, the EA app and the Epic Games Store.