Josef Fares, writer and director of co-op puzzle game It Takes Two, has taken to Twitter to share his excitement about the game reaching the milestone of 1 million sold copies. He joined the developers who helped bring It Takes Two to life, Hazelight Studios, in thanking those who had purchased the game.
Despite being a smaller title, Hazelight's It Takes Two has quickly become both a critical and commercial success. The game sees two players taking control of Cody and May, a married couple who are close to divorce, and guiding them through a series of puzzles after they have been trapped inside the bodies of their daughter Rose's handmade dolls. It Takes Two is designed to be played either via local split-screen or online co-op, with gameplay revolving around cooperative puzzle solving.
Josef Fares' other video games, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and A Way Out are also built around this same cooperative mentality. Both titles place specific emphasis on local split-screen gameplay and are structured around puzzles that require teamwork. Fares's response to It Takes Two hitting the milestone of 1 million copies sold is certainly indicative of his teamwork-oriented design philosophy, stating: "This shows that there definitely is players that also wants to play co op only games! Thank you everyone and I hope we see more game like this."
Fares is no stranger to success. A Way Out has sold almost 3.5 million copies to date, and Brothers was a critical darling in its own right. Hazelight Studios, who developed both A Way Out and It Takes Two along with Fares, were just as excited about It Takes Two's incredible sales, tweeting "Wow!!! Just found out #ItTakesTwo has sold over 1 million copies and is still going strong! Thank you so much for all the love you’ve shown our game, it means the world to us."
The success of games like It Takes Two is certainly a statement on gamers' love of cooperative play, but it also a testament to the talent of Hazelight Studios and Josef Fares. It Takes Two isn't just couch co-op for the sake of it, with a reasonably mature plot underpinning the complex cooperative mechanics that drive the gameplay.
Narrative plays a fundamental role in all of Fares' games, with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons revolving around two young boys trying to save their father from a deadly illness in the hopes that he won't perish, as their mother did. A Way Out deals with heavy themes as well, centering on two prison inmates who weave their way through betrayal and death as the game progresses. It is perhaps the complex nature of Fares' plots that has set his games aside from others in the genre, and with 1 million copies now sold, It Takes Two is no exception.
It Takes Two is currently available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
