Josef Fares, founder of Hazelight Studios, has announced that the team is working on a new game following the success of Split Fiction. He shared a photo on Twitter showing motion capture actors, confirming active development. The studio began early work on the project in 2025.
Josef Fares, the founder and director of Hazelight Studios, revealed on February 10, 2026, that the studio is developing its next game. In a post on Twitter, Fares shared an image of himself in a cozy sweater, giving a thumbs-up in front of actors wearing motion capture suits covered in dots. His arm obscures the actors' faces, keeping their identities hidden. The caption reads: “Next game in the making 👍😎”.
This announcement follows the release of Split Fiction in 2025, Hazelight's co-op-only adventure game about two authors escaping a VR simulation. The game achieved significant commercial success, selling 2 million copies in its first week, with 1 million sold in the initial 48 hours. Electronic Arts highlighted Split Fiction as a key contributor to its strong Q4 2025 financial results, alongside EA Sports FC 25.
Fares first discussed the new project in a March 2025 interview on the Friends Per Second podcast. At that time, he described it as being in very early stages: “Split Fiction is the best-received game we have done, everybody is super happy, but I’m so fully focused and excited on the next thing, that we’ve already started.” He noted that development focused mostly on story ideas, with some early gameplay concepts: “[It’s] mostly in the story, what’s going to happen, but a little bit in gameplay as well. It’s kind of like, ‘this is where we start, this is where we’re going.’"
Fares expressed being “super, super excited” about the project, which began in early 2025. Like previous Hazelight titles, the new game will involve motion-captured actors. Eurogamer's review of Split Fiction praised it as “Fantastic from start to finish, Split Fiction is one of the most inventive and joyful co-op games to date, and a testament to the power of human imagination.” Details about the game's content remain limited, with only those who completed Split Fiction's secret level having additional insights, according to reports.
