s.p.l.i.t

While I didn’t fully click with s.p.l.i.t, I will take my hat off to Mike Klubnika for his effective low-poly horror in the gaming space. Buckshot Roulette was an utter thrill ride that kept me on the edge of my seat. S.p.l.i.t is a short, and somewhat sweet game about hacking, horror, and Linux, that didn’t deliver. There are certainly those who will love this, but I honestly feel this is more of a game that people get a kick from watching than playing.

And here’s why.


Read between the lines

We play as Axel, a hacker who, with two others, is trying to launch a massive malware attack against a seemingly evil corporation. The stakes are high, the risk is great, and the only way out for Axel is certain death, since you don’t want to be taken alive by “them”.

Our world is through Axel’s eyes, we see a grubby, dank hub filled with a few treasured possessions, and his life’s work setup before him, running Linux. He is a skilled hacker, and so will you. S.p.l.i.t is a short game running between 30 to 45 minutes if you grasp the mechanics quickly enough, where you will extract files, digging through an OS, pulling information and more to gain the info and pull off the malware attack. It’s pretty much like using Linux, right down to the various commands used in real life.

 In between moments of tactical keyboard sabotage, you will speak with your fellow hackers, who fear that something is very wrong.

Now, a game can be 30 minutes and leave an impact on you. We don’t need a 25-hour venture to tell us revenge is bad and blah blah. Plenty of games deliver intense chills and powerful messages within a short period. S.p.l.i.t does have great atmosphere, that unnerving vibe which keeps you on edge, the low-poly looks are freaking awesome, the music is beautifully creepy, and all the little details of using the systems, the sounds of the computer, and general sound design are top notch.

The story is quite tense, and towards the end, when things escalate, is where a lot of drama occurs, and how written messages can leave me in a panic is a masterful presentation and writing from Mike Klubnika. There are two endings to unlock, and while there is some gravitas to them, I couldn’t help but feel a little empty. Not in a way where I had questions, or it left me with a sense of unease, but rather a “oh, that’s it”. The story and ending are quite chilling, but likely the short length didn’t leave me enough time to process, or even know more about the characters enough to fully care. It’s kind of like the Callisto Protocol, where we play Jacob for like 12 hours, and we barely know the guy … so when he dies, we don’t care.

There is a feeling of shock value for the sake of it, and while there are chills, and a heart racing narrative, the end didn’t sit right. It was a case of “the shocking thing was shocking because it’s awful and horrible itself, and not because I care about the character”.


ls cd .. cd .. ls

Now I used to work on Linux many years ago, so this was all quite familiar to me, and man, it’s just dull! I give immense praise to Mike for the attention to detail and for making a somewhat honest representation of hacking, which is just dull in reality.

s.p.l.i.t is very methodical, a slow burn, and one that requires attention and a bit of patience. If you’ve ever used Linux, then you know what I mean. That vast emptiness, like being in a maze that’s pitch black and you have a blindfold on for good measure sense of loss. Something is unnerving about venturing through code and feeling some form of helplessness. And as someone with dyslexia, damn, this game was quite unfriendly in the UI department. I do wish there were some accessibility options to ease the onscreen presence of code, as it can be quite overwhelming when you have to go back and forth in a database, finding the right 6-digit serial number you need.

It's incredibly technical and vastly tedious when you boil things down. And don’t expect jump scares, creepy visions and all that, since this is more about the grounded horrors, the threat of totalitarian superiority, and being in the middle of something highly illegal.

Gameplay summarised you will be hacking, finding information, typing commands on screen, and sitting in the same spot for 30 minutes, chatting from time to time (with incredibly slow auto-typing from the main character), and engaging in one puzzle that was not all that hard to figure out.


Overall?

Underwhelming is the main feeling I had with the gameplay, and s.p.l.i.t. honestly feels like a demo for a much bigger, bolder game. I love the idea, and could see it working if the horror was amped up, or there were a lot more puzzles, or other elements to add variety. However, instead, we have a short, bittersweet hacking game that lacks a lot of excitement. There will be plenty of people who will enjoy this, and fair enough to them.

I feel comparing this to Buckshot Roulette is a bit unfair, as they are very different. But Buckshot was also a very short game that left a massive impression, with its gripping, fierce gameplay, disturbing horror elements, and it was also quite replayable.

Something is interesting here, but I feel that s.p.l.i.t. is more worthwhile to watch someone else play, rather than playing it yourself.

+ Interesting concept
+ Presentation is quite amazing
+ Nice attention to detail

- The story could have been more developed
- Gameplay won’t be for everyone
- Lacking in accessibility options

A Steam review code of s.p.l.i.t was kindly provided by the publisher