Recent reviews by Cley Faye

This review will be split in two. First the good, then the bad. And a conclusion. So, split in three. Oops.


Very nice game. It's definitively one you'd want to play if you're even slightly interested in nicely done asymmetric coop play, where the two characters have different things to do and are not interchangeable from time to time.
It looks very good, voice acting is also good (although at least in french some lines are odd/out of place).

There's not much to say about the technical side of things. We only got very few minor bugs, nothing major broke, and gameplay was a smooth ride; inviting the second player always worked fine, although we only used the Steam invite system. And while the game do have an "Origin" warning on the store page, either it's completely transparent or it's not used at all; you can play without Origin running, and without an EA account (there's an option to toggle it in game).

The core concept of navigating through fiction worlds works well, as far as game mechanics goes. It also serves well as a way to introduce a *lot* of different gameplay mechanics along the ride, which keeps the game refreshing for a while. And there is enough difference between the two protagonists that replaying through the game a second time, although in a more speedy fashion, remains enjoyable.

The game also have a lot of stuff that's just here "for fun", which is quite welcome. Although there could have been way more interactions (assuming an infinite game dev budget…), there are nice moments that serves no other purpose than being nice and fun, something more game should have. There are also a LOT of references, some more obvious than other. But they are very well integrated; you won't feel like you missed something if you don't have the reference, and will enjoy catching them if you know about them.


Keep in mind that my opinion is that the game is worth playing. But it's very far from perfect.

There's a lot of repetition; despite the number of variations on each different gameplay sections, you'll find yourself redoing the same thing quite a few times. It's not omnipresent, but these stretched out sections are glaring, maybe even more since the game knows when to spice things up most of the time. About halfway through our first playthrough, we started to notice the tediousness of some sections.

There's also a few mechanical issues with the gameplay. All things considered, the game is very accessible to all players, experienced or casual. To such extent that a lot of auto-aim, targeting, etc. will hold your hand. While this it actually great (especially in environments that are quite detailed, so harder to read), this mechanism sometimes fail. Just when you get the feel of how jumping on a series of poles works, the last one will not work and you'll drop. Then, it will work just fine the next time. Ledge that should be automatically grabbed will not work sometimes, etc.

While the game have a very well done checkpoint mechanism, this is very irritating, and is a constant from start to finish.


Ok, I said I would only do a "good" and a "bad" section… and a conclusion. But there's an ugly one. As you might have surmised now, I'm not very good at writing stuff. Unfortunately, and given what I've read around I'm not on the majority's side on this, but the writing of Split Fiction is terrible.
Without spoiling anything, it can be described as tedious, uninspired, repetitive, without rythm. The underlying messages are plain to see. No need to look for subtext here; instead look for a glaring bright neon sign in front of each line of dialogue. There are subplots, but they're are equally bland.

The game tries to give in to emotional moments, but both the writing of the story and the storytelling left me completely out of it. Nothing clicks, nothing brings you in or incite you to learn more. The story is like an afterthought to the gameplay.
Speaking of storytelling, the frantic (relatively speaking) rythm of the gameplay kinda prevents a coherent narration from taking place, which does not help. In the end the main plot got me rolling my eyes at each lines, the subplots (the name's not appropriate, but I don't want to spoil anything here) are ok, but delivered in such a fragmented way, with such common tropes, that it's forgotten as soon as it happens.

Note: we played the game twice, once in French, once in English; it's not a translation issue. Also, the translation is quite good, both in text and voice acting.


This is a very nice game, worth it's price. There's enough enjoyment to grab out of the gameplay and it's very fun to play, keeping the player curious about what will come next in term of "super power", game mechanics, and so on.
You have to temper your expectations regarding the storytelling though. It's very bland. The story is barely enough to serve as a support to the gameplay, and you'd have to force yourself into it at every lines.
On the other hand, the game is full of small details, interactive stuff, references, the voice acting is good, there's a lot of jokes that some may call "corny" but works well in there.

Since this came after It Takes Two, it's basically more gameplay, without the pretense of having a story tying it together… sort of.

Short. Simple. Stylish. Free.

Just try it.

Très bon jeu!

Un metroidvania très orienté mouvement, combiné avec des combats assez strict (le classique attaque/parade/esquive). Vraiment prenant.
À la manette, les commandes sont précises, et ne donnent jamais l'impression de perdre le contrôle. Ça reste étonnamment simple, il n'y a que peu de combinaison complexe, et elles ne sont pas essentielles.
Niveau difficulté, ça plaira à tout le monde. Du mode facile à plusieurs modes vraiment punitifs, y'a le choix.

L'esthétique est vraiment soignée, et ne déçoit pas du début à la fin. Et le sound design est simple, mais parfaitement adapté.

Si vous aimez même juste un peu les metroidvania et les combats de boss en 2D, bah, voila.

Vraiment sympa.

Alors, évidemment, le jeu est en anglais. Et joue beaucoup avec des mots et des expressions, donc il faut pas être complètement un débutant.

Passé ce point, il y a plein d'idées intéressante; on pourrait penser que c'est simplement un jeu où on doit taper des mots pour progresser, et… c'est un peu vrai. Mais pas que; il y a quelque idées qui ajoute carrément de la stratégie au concept. Même si on "tape des lettres", les différentes mécaniques de jeu qui se débloquent permette de garder de la variété, c'est c'est cool.

Y'a une petite histoire sympa, de l'humour, et franchement si l'anglais ne vous bloque pas, ça vaut le détour. Le jeu de base est quand même très permissif, avec des réglages de difficultés très larges. Les seuls trucs un peu "dur" sont des secrets, cachés, et totalement optionnels.

Bref, essayez la démo, en gardant en tête que le jeu introduit par la suite suffisamment de variation pour tenir le joueur attentif le long du chemin.

Nice game. It's supposedly a remake, but I never played the original. Nevertheless, this is well made. It's a little easygoing, but navigating through the environments is nice as they are very well rendered and provide adequate traversal challenges to move between the main puzzles.

The game control well (I played on controller), and if you end up throwing yourself out of bound, the game quickly recover, making failure very forgiving, which is great as it does encourage experimenting with movement a bit.

All in all, a pretty and puzzly experience. Whether you're here to look for a remake of the original or just like chill games with a bit of reflexion sprinkled on it, I'd recommend it.

side note: steamdb indicates that the game contains EOS files, but they are not used; confirmed by the dev and by just removing it before running.

Un ptit jeu bien sympa. Les "mouvements" sont plutôt bien pensé, ça se contrôle raisonnablement bien à la manette, et pour l'essentiel le jeu a suffisamment de flexibilité pour ne pas être fastidieux sur le backtracking.

Le jeu est considéré comme un Metroidvania, mais fondamentalement c'est plutôt un jeu d'exploration; le retour en arrière n'est pas nécessaire pour progresser dans le jeu. Il est par contre nécessaire pour tout débloquer et collecter, ce que le jeu encourage avec un système d'information sur les éléments manquants plus ou moins trié par régions.

L'histoire est… bah, existe. C'est un support suffisant pour entrainer le joueur à vouloir avancer, même si le gimmick principal est un peu abstrait. Et elle n'est pas envahissante (pas de cutscene de douze heures à craindre ici).

Un tout petit peu de rejouabilité avec les succès à débloquer, mais c'est un jeu qui une fois fini, ben c'est fini.

On tombe parfois sur quelque bugs (facilement résolu avec le système de sauvegarde/chargement rapide pour la plupart) et certains éléments de l'UI sont un peu fastidieux à la manette, mais c'est suffisamment rare pour ne pas être un problème.

Bref, plutôt cool.

Short, free, scratches that "I want to see number go high" itch, do not span into days of grind, have an ending, and maybe a bit of replayability for optimizing people out there.

Just a great little thing.

Incredibly short, and basically what you see is what you get : some basic dungeon crawling reminiscent of the old day of dungeon master, some short sexy scene, and a bit of humor.

The execution is very good though; the visual style really works well, the movement is nice, the difficulty is fairly balanced… it is a shame that there is little meat on this bone, though. Still, for that price, it's a nice little romp.

I'd be curious to see more of that.

Nice game. The puzzles are pretty self explanatory, but the game regularly adds new twists to prevent things from getting dull. The game is quite short, but the length feels adequate.

Nice game. Quite short, but good to spend a bit of brain power.