My Idea for a Hazelight Studios Co-op Game

Hazelight Studios is a video game development company based in Stockholm, Sweden. They are very well-known for creating brilliant co-op video games, such as Brothers, A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction.

For anyone who doesn’t know, a co-op video game is a game that you can’t play on your own, you have to play with at least one other person. In the case of all of Hazelight’s games, you have to play their games with one other person, because their games always centre around two main characters, so you need two players to control both characters.

I’ve been a huge fan of Hazelight’s work ever since ‘A Way Out’. A lot of multiplayer games tend to be less about story, plot or character development, and more around just completing a series of fun tasks/puzzles together e.g. Fall Guys, Heave Ho, and Phasmophobia to name a few. But all of Hazelight’s games focus mostly on the characters and the story, with some puzzles to solve along the way.

‘A Way Out’ is about two criminals trying to break out of jail and get revenge on another criminal who did them dirty, ‘It Takes Two’ is about two parents who are about to divorce trying to patch up their relationship, and ‘Split Fiction’ is about two authors who are absorbed into each other’s sci-fi and fantasy stories and have to find their way back to reality (as a fantasy writer myself, guess which game is my favourite!). This is why I think Hazelight’s games are so much more unique than a lot of standard co-op games.

Because I love their games so much, this led me down a rabbit hole of daydreaming; what story would I write for a co-op game, like the ones Hazelight make? Let’s be clear, I am no game developer, I wouldn’t know the first thing about actually creating a video game. But I like daydreaming and brainstorming, and I like video games, and I like creating stories, so of course I’m going to think up potential video game plots without any knowledge of making something like that a reality!

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Funnily enough, the whole reason I decided to write this blog post is because I realised that a story idea I had from ages ago would make the perfect, funny co-op game!

I had this idea of writing a fantasy story about a classic hero/knight in shining armour character going on adventures and defeating the great evil BUT…the whole story is written from the perspective of the hero’s two animal companions; a horse/mount companion that the hero rides, and a smaller, furry companion that rides on the hero’s shoulder or walks alongside them.

I thought it would be funny if the great hero was actually a complete idiot who kept running into danger without thinking, and the whole story was about his two animal companions constantly having to get him out of danger.

I was even going to go so far as to make the hero and all the people speak gobbledegook, while the two animal companions and all the other animals in the book would speak English. So, when reading the book, you’d only understand what the animals were saying, and you’d be in the same boat as the animals, not able to fully understand what the humans are talking about.

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I think you can see where I’m going with this! Imagine a co-op game where you and friend control two animals, and your whole objective is to help your idiot master get out of the sticky situations they end up in.

Now, I appreciate some people would probably find this concept very annoying! There are a lot of examples in video games of missions where you had to protect a video game character, and because their AI was busted as all hell, it was a nightmare trying to protect them. These are known as ‘escort missions’ in video game terms; your objective is to help a character get from A to B without them dying.

One of the most infamously terrible escort missions I’ve heard about would have to be escorting Natalya in the James Bond game ‘Goldeneye 007’. I’ve never played the game myself, but even I’ve heard about Natalya because of how janky her AI apparently is!

However, video game AI is getting better and better every day, so I believe you could make an entire game around the concept of keeping a character safe without it being annoying, IF you make sure the character’s AI is good.

Also, if you focus on the characters themselves and their personalities, like Hazelight Studios tend to do, then it’s not just a huge escort mission where you’re forced to protect this character you barely know. It becomes a game where you genuinely want to help these animals protect their master.

Maybe the hero/master is very kind and caring towards their animal companions, despite being a complete idiot. Take the stop-motion animated tv and film franchise ‘Wallace & Gromit’ for example. Gromit is constantly having to save Wallace, and he’s always annoyed and fed up about it. But because Wallace is such a genuinely kind and funny character, you actually want Gromit to keep helping him, no matter how annoying it is.

If I was going to write a story for this hypothetical co-op game, I think I would set it in a fantasy world (obviously) and make both the animal companions some form of magical/mystical creatures. One would be bigger so the hero could ride on their back, and the other would be smaller and walk alongside.

With the hero riding on the bigger one’s back, this also means that sometimes the two players could navigate the game without having to run after the hero, because one of the player’s would be in control of where the hero goes while he’s riding their back.

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In ‘Split Fiction’, Hazelight’s most recent game, there are a few sections where the two human characters actually turn into animals, or into things other than humans. So, it’s not a huge stretch to assume that Hazelight would be able to create an entire game where you control two characters that aren’t humanoid at all.

In terms of the plot for the game, it would be a fairly typical ‘hero goes on a quest to defeat a great evil’ story, with lots of side quests along the way. Maybe the hero buys both of his animal companions at the beginning of the game to help him with his quest because they both have certain magical abilities.

Maybe the two companions don’t get along at first, and maybe they also don’t particularly like their new master because he’s such an idiot. But along the way, they see the good in him and become friends themselves, agreeing to work together to help their master defeat this great evil and save the world.

Those are some of my thoughts on a story that could make an interesting co-op game. Let me know what you guys think! What creatures would you pick for the two animal companions to be? Do you think my idea could even work? I’d love to know your thoughts and have a lovely day!

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Sources:

https://www.hazelight.se/

https://www.fallguys.com/en-US

https://store.steampowered.com/app/905340/Heave_Ho/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/739630/Phasmophobia/

https://www.wallaceandgromit.com/