Split Fiction

The structure is the same one It Takes Two used and the execution is better. Two players, always split screen, and a game that introduces a mechanic, builds one perfect set piece around it, and then never uses it again. Fourteen hours, dozens of ideas, no filler between them.

Two genres, deliberately at odds

One writer works in science fiction, the other in fantasy, and the levels alternate between their worlds — so a chapter of gravity boots and hoverbikes is followed by one of dragons and snow. Neither player is ever doing the same thing as the other, which is the actual innovation: my partner was solving a rotation puzzle while I was outrunning something, and we had to describe our screens to each other to progress.

The side stories are the best part. Optional short levels, hidden in each chapter, built on ideas too strange to sustain a full chapter — one is a pig farm, one is a dance game, one I will not describe.

Runtime

16 hours, one weekend

Side stories found

All of them

Distinct mechanics, rough count

Over 40

It only works with the right person

There is no matchmaking, no single-player, and no way to play this without talking. The Friend Pass means only one of you buys it, which is the correct decision and rare enough to note.

Where it slips

The story is functional at best — two writers trapped in a machine that steals ideas, with a villain who announces his motive in the first hour and never complicates it. The dialogue during play is worse than the level design deserves.

There is also a stretch in the fourth chapter where the ideas thin out and two consecutive sections use variations of the same platforming.

The verdict

Sixteen hours across one weekend and the most fun I have had co-operatively in years. The invention rate is absurd and almost none of it is wasted.

Buy it if you have one specific person. It is worthless without them, and excellent with them.