There is a game studio in Stockholm, Sweden with a perfect release record.
Three games. Three genuine hits. Over 36 million copies sold. Scores of major awards. And a growing reputation as the studio that figured out co-op gaming when most of the industry had stopped trying.
That studio is Hazelight. And the story of how it got there is worth knowing.
Already want to see what they have made? See our guide to all Hazelight games in order.
Josef Fares: The Man Who Started It All
Hazelight Studios exists because of one person: Josef Fares.
Fares is Swedish-Lebanese, born in Lebanon and raised in Sweden after moving there as a child during the Lebanese Civil War. Before he made games, he made films. He directed several Swedish feature films in the early 2000s, and the storytelling instincts he built there have shaped every game Hazelight has ever released.
His entry into games came in 2013 when he directed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons at Starbreeze Studios. It was a single-player game about two brothers controlled simultaneously by one player, using both thumbsticks on a controller independently. It was unusual, inventive, and emotionally devastating. It showed that Fares understood what games could do that no other medium could.
After Brothers, Fares founded Hazelight Studios in Stockholm in 2014. He had a clear idea of what he wanted to build: games made exclusively for two players. Not games with an optional co-op mode added at the end of development. Games built from the very first design decision around two people playing together.
That distinction sounds small. In practice, it changes everything.
One Rule That Became a Creative Engine
Every Hazelight game has always had the same two rules.
Co-op only. No single-player mode. No AI partner to fill the second slot. If you want to play a Hazelight game, you need another person. That is not a limitation they apologise for. It is the foundation everything else is built on.
Friend's Pass. Only one player needs to own the game. The second player downloads a free pass and plays the entire experience at no cost. This has been in every Hazelight game from the beginning.
These two rules together created something unusual: a studio that could only survive if the games were genuinely good enough to make two people want to play them together. There is nowhere to hide. If the co-op is not meaningful, the games do not work. That pressure produced some of the best co-op experiences ever made.
A Way Out (2018): The Bet That Paid Off
Nobody knew if Hazelight's approach would work. A Way Out was the proof.
A Way Out follows Leo and Vincent, two prisoners with nothing in common except a mutual enemy on the outside. The game begins with their escape from a maximum-security prison and builds into a full crime thriller across chase sequences, shootouts, and one of the most discussed endings in recent co-op gaming.
What made it stand out was the split-screen. Hazelight used both players' screens simultaneously throughout the entire game, sometimes showing completely different things on each side, sometimes playing the two players against each other mid-session. It felt unlike anything else available at the time.
The game won a BAFTA and sold over 13 million copies. For a co-op-only game from a studio nobody had heard of, that was a remarkable result. It proved the concept and gave Hazelight the credibility to go bigger.
Explore the A Way Out collection at the official Hazelight store.
It Takes Two (2021): The Game That Changed Everything
If A Way Out proved Hazelight could do it, It Takes Two proved they could do it at the highest level in gaming.
The game follows Cody and May, a married couple on the verge of divorce who are accidentally transformed into dolls by their daughter's desperate wish. To return to human form they have to work through every broken part of their relationship, chapter by chapter, in a world that constantly invents new mechanics to mirror what they are experiencing emotionally.
The shed chapter uses tools. The attic uses chaos. The treehouse uses the physical distance between them. None of the mechanics repeat. By the end of the game, players have experienced what feels like fifteen completely different games somehow telling the same story.
It Takes Two won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2021. It also won the BAFTA Game of the Year, the DICE Award, and virtually every other major recognition that year. It sold over 16 million copies and is widely regarded as one of the best games of its generation.
For Hazelight, it was everything. For co-op gaming as a genre, it was a moment that showed what was possible when a studio committed completely to the format.
See our full breakdown of Cody and May and why they make It Takes Two the perfect couples game.
Split Fiction (2025): Refusing to Rest
Four years after winning Game of the Year, Hazelight could have made a safer game. They did not.
Split Fiction arrived in March 2025 following Mio Hudson and Zoe Foster, two writers trapped inside a simulation of their own stories. One writes sci-fi. The other writes fantasy. The game ricochets between their worlds constantly, each chapter set in a completely different genre with completely different mechanics.
There is a personal detail buried in the game that says a lot about how Fares works. Mio and Zoe share their names with his two daughters. The studio's biggest, most ambitious release to date is named after his kids.
Split Fiction scored perfect reviews from GameSpot, Push Square, NME and others, earned a 98% recommendation rate on OpenCritic, and sold one million copies in its first three days. It also introduced cross-platform play for the first time in Hazelight history.
By any measure, Split Fiction did what almost no follow-up manages: it raised the bar rather than meeting it.
Read our full breakdown in 7 Things Split Fiction Does Better Than Most Co-Op Games.
What Makes Hazelight Different
The games are the obvious answer. But the reason the games are what they are comes down to a few specific things.
The constraint is the point. Co-op only means every single design decision is made with two players in mind. There is no version of the game designed for one person that co-op was bolted onto. The two-player experience is the game. That is rarer than it sounds.
Mechanics serve the story. In most games, story and gameplay run in parallel. In Hazelight games, they are the same thing. The tools Cody uses reflect who Cody is. The worlds Mio and Zoe travel through reflect their imaginations and their relationship. This connection between what you do and what the game is about is what makes the emotional moments land so hard.
Nobody is player 2. Every Hazelight game gives both players equal importance. Equal narrative weight, equal mechanical responsibility, equal moments. There is no one carrying the other. That equality is what makes co-op feel meaningful rather than functional.
They do not repeat themselves. Three games in, Hazelight has not reused a major mechanic. Every chapter in every game introduces something new. That level of creative invention, sustained across an entire studio's output, is genuinely unusual.
What Is Next for Hazelight?
As of mid-2026, Hazelight has not officially announced their next game.
What they have done is build one of the most trusted names in co-op gaming. The expectation for whatever comes next is that it will be co-op only, that one player will not need to buy it, and that it will do something nobody expected.
Three games in, that expectation feels completely reasonable.
The Official Hazelight Merchandise Collection
The official Hazelight store carries licensed merchandise across all three games, built for the players and co-op partners who experienced them.
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It Takes Two Collector's Collection: Cody and May figures, plushies, posters and more
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Split Fiction Collector's Collection: Mio, Zoe and dragon plushies, posters and apparel
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A Way Out Collection: Leo and Vincent poster, crewneck, t-shirt and lanyard
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Shop everything: all three games, all officially licensed
FAQ
Where is Hazelight Studios based?
Hazelight Studios is based in Stockholm, Sweden. The studio was founded there in 2014 by Josef Fares.
How many games has Hazelight made?
Three: A Way Out (2018), It Takes Two (2021), and Split Fiction (2025). All three are co-op only and all three were critical and commercial successes.
Who is the founder of Hazelight Studios?
Josef Fares, a Swedish-Lebanese film director and game director. Before founding Hazelight, he directed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013) at Starbreeze Studios and several Swedish feature films before that.
Are Hazelight games connected to each other?
The games are standalone stories with no shared characters or world. They are connected by the studio's creative philosophy: co-op only, Friend's Pass, mechanics tied to story, and two equal protagonists. Each game is a completely independent experience.
Who publishes Hazelight games?
All three Hazelight games were published by Electronic Arts under the EA Originals label. Hazelight operates as an independent studio with creative control over their games.
Will there be a new Hazelight game?
Hazelight has not officially announced their next game. Given their track record, the expectation is that it will follow the same format: co-op only, Friend's Pass, and something mechanically inventive that nobody has seen before.
Why are all Hazelight games co-op only?
This is a deliberate creative decision by Josef Fares and the studio. Co-op only means every design choice is made with two players as the baseline. Hazelight believe the best co-op experiences are ones built around partnership from the very first design decision, not ones where co-op is added later.
