Post Script
Josef Fares, director and Hazelight founder
Josef Fares’ first real foray into games – 2013’s Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons – bought him enough of a reputation to found his own studio, Hazelight. After a wobbly debut with A Way Out, a game Fares acknowledges “was a little bit rough around the edges”, Hazelight found its form on It Takes Two, which went on to sell 20m copies and won The Game Awards’ top prize in 2021. Speaking to Fares just before Split Fiction’s launch, we find him as charmingly garrulous as his reputation, and games, suggest.
Hazelight has become known as
the
developer of modern shared-and splitscreen co-op games – is that something you’ve committed the studio to for the long-term future?
Doing [A Way Out] made me realise that there’s so much to be explored here, from a perspective of how you can create a dynamic, not only on the screen, but also what goes on on the couch. There’s something so profound and cool about experiencing something, a narrative and an adventure, together. There’s so much more to be explored there. Co-op will always be part of the DNA of Hazelight, because we have become the best at it, pretty much. With that said, the first game [Brothers] was singleplayer. In the future, who knows what happens, but it’s going to be done in the Hazelight way.