Split Fiction First Hours Walkthrough: What to Do First

Why the First Two Hours Matter

I've watched three different pairs of friends start Split Fiction. Two of them quit before Chapter 2 because they didn't understand the co-op language the game was trying to teach them. The third pair finished the whole thing in a weekend and immediately started a second playthrough.

The difference? The third pair treated the tutorial like an actual tutorial instead of rushing to "the real game."

So here's what you should actually do, minute by minute, for your first session.

The Prologue: 0-15 Minutes

You wake up in a glass pod. The game gives you basic movement controls , walk, jump, interact. But both players see the same room from different angles. This is intentional. The game is already training you to share information.

First thing: look up. There's a collectible on top of the pod you just left. I missed it on my first run because I was too busy reading the UI prompts. Hazelight loves hiding things in plain sight.

The prologue walk-and-talk sequence introduces Mio and Zoe's personalities. Mio is stiff and skeptical, Zoe is open but overwhelmed. Pay attention to thier dialogue , it establishes the trust arc that the entire story hinges on. The voice acting is genuinely good, which shouldn't surprise anyone who played It Takes Two.

Chapter 1: The Lab , 15-60 Minutes

The first real gameplay section drops you into Mio's sci-fi world. Grey corridors, humming machinery, robotic announcements. Your objective is simple: reach the central control room.

The first co-op puzzle has one player standing on a pressure plate to open a door while the other walks through. Basic stuff. But then the second puzzle adds a timer , the door closes after three seconds, so the first player has to sprint through after releasing the plate. Maybe this is the game teaching you "timing matters."

A few things I wish I'd caught earlier:

The yellow-glowing terminals throughout the lab are lore dumps but they're skippable. Don't skip them on your first run. They explain why Mio and Zoe are trapped in the simulation, and the backstory about the corporation that built the machine is actually unsettling , it's a creativity-extraction device disguised as a writing tool.

When you reach the gravity-flip room, take turns being the "anchor" player. The anchor stays on the ground and activates switches. The other player walks on walls and ceilings. Both roles require different spatial reasoning, and switching roles here makes later gravity sections much easier because you've seen both perspectives.

The Chapter 1 boss is a corrupted security AI. It's not hard , it has three attack patterns and you can learn all of them in two attempts. The trick is that both players need to survive simultaneously. If one player dies, both restart from the checkpoint. This co-op death rule applies throughout the entire game, so get used to communicating about incoming attacks.

Chapter 2: Into the Fantasy Realm , 60-120 Minutes

Zoe's fantasy world is a palette cleanser after the sterile lab. Sunlight, floating islands, giant friendly creatures. The platforming here introduces double-jump and glide mechanics that stay for the rest of the game.

The first Side Story portal appears in Chapter 2. Look for a shimmering blue doorway tucked behind the waterfall about five minutes in. Side Stories are optional mini-chapters based on childhood stories Mio and Zoe wrote. They're completely different in tone from the main game , one has you playing as farm animals escaping a slaughterhouse. I'm not joking.

Chapter 2's main puzzle is a rotating tower where one player controls the tower's orientation while the other navigates its interior. It's the first real test of coordination. The inside player needs to call out which direction they need, and the outside player needs to rotate the tower without over-rotating. Over-communication is better than under-communication here. Say "stop" early.

There's a hidden collectible on top of the tower after you finish the puzzle. Most people leave immediately but if you rotate the tower one more time, a platform extends to the roof. Grab it before moving on.

Before You Quit for the Day

After Chapter 2, you've seen both world types and the core mechanics are established. Chapters 3-8 iterate on everything the first two chapters teach. If you're enjoying it by now, you'll love the rest. If you're frustrated, try swapping characters , sometimes the problem isn't the game, it's that you're playing the wrong role for your brain.

What to Do Between Sessions

Split Fiction is best played in 2-3 hour sessions. The chapters are self-contained enough that stopping between them feels natural. Chapter 1 and 2 make a good first session. Chapters 3-4 for the second. Chapter 5 can be its own session if you're struggling (and you might be). Chapters 6-8 make a solid final push.

If you're playing online with someone in a different time zone, coordinate chapter breaks in advance. There's nothing worse than one person wanting to push through Chapter 5 at midnight while the other is falling asleep and dying to Fabricator Prime's Phase 1 adds.

The game's autosave system means you never need to rush to a save point. If someone needs to stop, stop. The worst case is you lose a few minutes of puzzle progress within your current section. Collectible and Side Story progress persists regardless of where you quit.

Settings Worth Changing

Beyond motion blur (off) and camera sensitivity (+20%), there are a few other settings that improve the experience.

Subtitles: on, with speaker names enabled. The dialogue between Mio and Zoe is well-written and some of it happens during action sequences where you'll miss spoken lines. The speaker name tags help you track who's talking during chaotic moments.

Controller vibration: personal preference, but I turn it down to about 50%. The default vibration is aggressive during boss fights and can be distracting. You still feel the important haptic cues (like the heartbeat pulse when a boss is about to do its room-wide attack) without the constant rumble.

Split-screen orientation: leave it on "Dynamic." The manual vertical/horizontal lock sounds useful in theory , you'd think forcing horizontal split would be better for a platformer , but the dynamic switching is tuned per-section and the manual lock can create awkward viewing angles during zero-G and vertical sections.

Audio mix: bump the dialogue volume to 100% and lower music to 80% during boss fights. The music is great but it overpowers voice cues during tense moments. You want to hear your partner's callouts clearly over the orchestral swell.

I'm sure there's more I forgot to mention. You play long enough and things start blending together, you know?