It Takes Two (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  It Takes Two, a 2021 adventure from Hazelight Studios, is a video game that nobody can finish alone. It has no single-player option. Every player needs a partner, either sitting nearby or connected online, and the story simply will not move forward without both of them. That rule shapes everything about the experience, from how its puzzles are built to how its characters talk to each other. This documentary asks how a game can be designed around exactly two people from its first sketch. It asks what story a studio chooses to tell when the audience is a pair, and why a tale about a strained marriage struck such a chord. And it follows the road from a small studio's idea to awards stages and a planned Hollywood film.

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• 2. Built for Two

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  Imagine one player rewinding time while the other splits into copies of herself. That is how the game treats Cody and May in one level, and the contrast captures its whole approach. Each character carries abilities matched to the theme of the area, and the two sets only make sense when combined. The screen is divided for both local and online play, so each person watches their own character and their partner's progress at once. Puzzles ask for complementary actions, such as triggering machinery, building a path or coordinating during a boss fight. Failure is cheap. A fallen character comes back quickly, and in harder sections the defeated player can hurry the return by tapping a button repeatedly. The designers deliberately avoided repetition, so major mechanics change from chapter to chapter and tie into the setting. Players pass through platforming, shooting, racing, flight and arcade-style challenges. Between the main objectives, short side paths hold competitive minigames, and the game keeps a running tally of wins and losses between the two players.

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• 3. Dolls in the Shed

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  Rose, the young daughter of Cody and May, cries over two hand-made dolls in the family shed, and her tears set the whole plot in motion. Her parents have just told her they plan to divorce. Rose tries to mend things by acting out a scene with the dolls, which resemble her parents. Cody, voiced by Joseph Balderrama, and May, voiced by Annabelle Dowler, become trapped inside the toys. Clare Corbett voices Rose. Their guide is Dr. Hakim, a talking book about relationship therapy, who says his job is to fix their marriage. He sets obstacles in their path so they must cooperate. Along the way they meet living versions of their own belongings, which scold them for neglecting both their possessions and Rose. Good memories surface as they cross their property. Hakim then pushes each of them toward a lost passion. Cody's abandoned garden and greenhouse need rescuing, and May is guided back to music and singing. Meanwhile their real bodies lie unconscious, and Rose, believing she is the cause of the quarrels, runs away. Her parents finish Hakim's last test by gathering an orchestra and audience for May to sing before. Her song repairs the bond, a kiss breaks the spell, and the pair wake up to find Rose missing. They find her at a bus stop and promise that she is not to blame. The movements of Hakim, the meddling book, were performed by the game's own director, Josef Fares.

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• 4. A Guiding Word

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  Josef Fares keeps a single word in mind for each game he directs. He said Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was about "loss", A Way Out was about "trust", and It Takes Two was about "collaboration". Fares directed Brothers at Starbreeze in 2013 and A Way Out at Hazelight in 2018. After the second of those, the studio chose to make another game built only for cooperative play, feeling more experienced and ready to push the ideas further. A team of 60 people worked on it. Fares insisted that a cooperative game should be planned around two people from day one rather than adapted from a solo design, with communication between players essential to progress. He also pressed his team for a wide range of mechanics and set pieces, arguing that repeated mechanics would become "less special". He described the project as a romantic comedy, a genre he considered unusual in games, and the team looked to Pixar films for the look and feel of its characters. Scenes were storyboarded before much of the gameplay existed, then story and play were adjusted together. The actors playing Cody and May did their motion capture at Hazelight and were free to improvise. Much of the code was written in AngelScript, through Hazelight's own link between that scripting language and Unreal Engine.

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• 5. Publishing and Release

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  In June 2019, Electronic Arts signed a publishing deal with Hazelight, and the game was released under the EA Originals label. The arrangement let the studio keep full creative control and take most of the profit once development costs were recovered. A year later, in June 2020, the game was officially revealed during EA Play. Trouble followed before launch, when Take-Two Interactive filed a trademark claim over the title. Hazelight later dropped its own trademark application for the name, saying it could not discuss ongoing disputes but was "hopeful it will be resolved". EA and Hazelight also introduced Friend's Pass, which lets the buyer invite a friend to play for free. The game arrived on the 26th of March 2021 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. A Nintendo Switch version came on the 4th of November 2022, built by Turn Me Up Games. Producer Louis Polak said local wireless play needed a custom solution, since the original had not been designed around the console's wireless system. Executive producer Scott Cromie said the port aimed for 720p in handheld mode, 1080p when docked, and 30 frames per second. Fares said the studio had not focused on Switch during the main production, yet he praised the port and cited his admiration for Nintendo's approach to accessible design.

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• 6. Reception and Sales

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  One million copies sold within a month of launch. That was only the beginning, as sales reached 7 million by the middle of 2022 and passed 20 million by late 2024. By April 2026, the total stood above 30 million copies worldwide. Critics were warm too, and the aggregator Metacritic labelled the reviews "generally favorable". GameSpot admired the creativity and pacing, noting that a steady flow of new ideas kept the game from going stale. IGN called it inventive, with mechanics that kept evolving. GamesRadar+ pointed to its commitment to split-screen play and shared problem-solving. Game Informer liked how the emotional story fed into the cooperative challenges, and Shacknews applauded the variety. Jeuxvideo.com and Gamer.no gave high scores. The Guardian found an engrossing puzzle adventure with effective teamwork, Video Games Chronicle praised a steady stream of ideas, and NME compared it to a Pixar platformer. Nintendo Life said the later Switch release kept the cooperative appeal despite technical compromises. The story drew a more divided response. Some critics disliked uneven writing and the character of Dr. Hakim. PC Gamer found parts of the script weak and Hakim irritating, yet still praised the game's imagination and cooperative design.

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• 7. Awards and Adaptations

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  At The Game Awards 2021, It Takes Two won Game of the Year. The 25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards gave it the same honor. The Golden Joystick Awards named it Best Multiplayer Game, The Steam Awards gave it Better With Friends, and the SXSW Gaming Awards honored its Excellence in Multiplayer. At the 18th British Academy Games Awards it earned multiple nominations and two wins. Other categories it appeared in included Best Family Game, Best Narrative and Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition. Hollywood noticed as well. In January 2022, a film and a television adaptation were announced, both in development from Dmitri M. Johnson's dj2 Entertainment. That April, Amazon acquired distribution rights to the film through a first-look deal involving Story Kitchen and screenwriters Pat Casey and Josh Miller. The producers include Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia, Michael Lawrence Goldberg and Timothy I. Stevenson, alongside Johnson of dj2. The project is planned as a joint venture between Hazelight Studios, Story Kitchen, Seven Bucks Productions and Amazon, aimed at Prime Video, with Dwayne Johnson reportedly courted to star. As of 2025, Fares had voiced frustration at how slowly the film was moving.

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