When I told my partner I’d need her help reviewing the next game on my docket, she was optimistic but ambivalent. She enjoyed Hazelight Studios' last game, the phenomenal It Takes Two. But she’d also seen me sit down for hours, diligently taking notes and picking apart some new game before a certain deadline. Having to join me in that endeavor didn’t seem like a fun way to spend a couple weekends after a long work week.

But after 15 hours of the most creativity she’s ever seen in a video game, Split Fiction managed to change her tune. At the game’s surprisingly emotional crescendo, I noticed her sniffling and wiping away tears.

“I’m kind of sad this is going to be over,” she told me. She’d fallen in love with the game’s two endearing protagonists, its reverence of the fiction she grew up reading, and the many ways it challenged us to think outside the box. Her sentiments matched mine exactly.

With Split Fiction, Hazelight has yet again raised the bar for what a shared gaming experience can be. From its pertinent story about the devaluing of creativity, strong characters with even stronger character arcs, and the sheer imagination of its moment-to-moment gameplay, Split Fiction lives up to the hype of its popular predecessor and then some. It’s certainly a tougher game compared to the beginner-friendly It Takes Two. But the challenge doesn’t deter Split Fiction from being a new standard for co-op video games.

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Beat ‘em ups are a genre that flourished in the heyday of arcades, when players scrounged and pinched every quarter they could to see those credits roll. But as video games advanced and moved more into home consoles the genre quietly faded away – until recent years when a new wave of developers pushed to give beat ‘em ups a new renaissance.

Leading that charge is Guard Crush Games, the studio behind the comeback of a classic Sega series with Streets of Rage 4. Now, the studio is looking to really push the envelope with a new original fantasy beat ‘em up that doesn’t just capture the spirit of arcade cabinet classics, but redefines the genre at large by fusing it with the increasingly popular roguelite.

“Beat ‘em ups are a genre from the arcade where when you die you restart from the beginning, it’s the original ‘rogue’ experience,” says Absolum lead game designer Jordi Asensio, “The roots were already there in the genre.”

Absolum is unlike any beat ‘em up you’ve ever seen, a game that looks at the innovations brought by SuperGiant Games’ Hades and tries to apply that to an entirely different style of game. With the reveal of Absolum, Inverse had the chance to talk to Asensio, art director Maxime Mary, and Dotemu CEO Cyrille Imbert – diving into the studio’s ambitions to redefine a resurging genre.