Hazelight Studios’ Josef Fares has revealed that the studio is already working on its next game after the success of Split Fiction. Speaking on the Friends Per Second podcast, Fares has said that he is “fully focused” on the next game.
On the podcast, Fares spoke ab out how he starts moving on to new projects right after releasing a game. He does acknowledge, however, that it feels a bit “extra special” this time because of the massively positive critical and commercial reception of Split Fiction.
“For me personally, every time a game is out, I’m kind of done with it,” said Fares. “I’m kind of like. ‘OK, now it’s the next thing,’ but this has been a bit extra special because I would say that it’s been the best-received game we have done. But to be honest, everybody’s super happy, but I’m so fully focused and excited on the next thing that we already have started, just want to say that. So I feel super, super excited.”
Fares also spoke about the positive reception for Split Fiction. For context, Split Fiction was the first game by Hazelight Studios to have scored more than 90 on Metacritic throughout the studio’s 13 years of developing games. Hazelight celebrated Split Fiction‘s positive reception with an accolades trailer.
“I think it ended up somewhere around 88,” says Fares referring to the Metacritic rating for Hazelight’s previous title, It Takes Two. “They had in the team some kind of guessing, where they guess the Metacritic score. And they had a couple of people who nailed it actually at 91. That was great.”
Further in the podcast, Fares spoke about how the team at Hazelight is excited to do even better for its next game. He spoke about how the studio isn’t worried about not being able to surpass its work with Split Fiction in its next project.
“To tell you this, we’ve been talking about this a lot, we in the team really really feel like ‘oh, they really like this so much,’” said Fares. “We can do way better. That’s the funny part. It’s not like we’re feeling now ‘how will we top this’ or ‘do better than this’. We just feel, just wait till what we do next, you know.”
“That’s how confident we feel in what we are doing. But the mood is super good, everybody is super excited.”
Split Fiction was incredibly successful, managing to sell a million copies in its first 48 hours. The studio also revealed that the game had sold 2 million copies in its first week. The title has been well-received by critics as well as players, and its Steam version is rated at “Overwhelmingly Positive.”
Split Fiction is a co-op game that puts players in the shoes of two girls – Mio and Zoe. Both players must work together to try and escape from a simulation that they are both trapped in. Split Fiction was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this month. Check out our review for more details.