Hela: of Mice & Magic is not a Hazelight game. It is developed by Windup Games in Umeå, Sweden, and its core members come from Coldwood Interactive, the studio behind the Unravel series. The comparison people reach for first, It Takes Two, is the wrong lead even though the surface resemblance is real: a small creature, a large natural world, and puzzles instead of fights.
The closer reference is Unravel. A tiny figure moving through scenery built at a scale that dwarfs it, solving traversal problems rather than winning battles, is the shape of the thing.
Where the Hazelight comparison breaks
It Takes Two is built for exactly two players and will not run without a partner. Hela runs solo, and the Shade System exists precisely to fill the second role with a magical copy of your own mouse. That single design decision separates the two games more than any visual similarity.
The second break is combat. Hela has no enemies, no health bar and no damage-based failure. It is a third-person open adventure about gathering, brewing remedies, solving physics puzzles and helping creatures restore harmony to the land.
The third is authorship. Windup's core team came out of Coldwood, which built Unravel, and the mouse-scale world of northern Swedish forest, meadow, wetland and cave reads as a continuation of that work rather than as a Hazelight follow-up.
Official media · SteamIf you want gentle exploration without combat
Unravel Two is the closest match in tone. It is a two-player co-op puzzle platformer about two small yarn creatures crossing a natural world, and its conflicts come from terrain and physics rather than from enemies. The scale, the material and the mood all sit next to Hela.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is the closest match in control. It is a single-player game about two brothers, with one player operating both of them at once. That is the same problem the Shade System solves: how to be in two places when the puzzle expects two bodies.
If you want a game that insists on two people
It Takes Two, A Way Out and Split Fiction all require a partner, and all three build their design around two people being present at the same time. It Takes Two is a co-op puzzle adventure. A Way Out is a two-player prison escape. Split Fiction is a two-player co-op story that moves between genres.
None of the three can be played alone. That is the point of them, and it is also the reason they are not interchangeable with Hela, which treats a solo run as a complete way to play rather than a rehearsal.
Official media · SteamIf you want four players together
None of the named games does four. Local play in Hela caps at two, and the four-player option is online, through Epic Online Services, with a copy and a linked account for each person and no Friend Pass.
That four-player ceiling is unusual for the genre, and it is the strongest reason to pick this game over the closer tonal matches. A pair of friends will find plenty that feels familiar; a group of four will not.
What to expect if you arrive from It Takes Two
Two habits carry over and one does not. The habits are reading a room for cooperative affordances and expecting the second player to matter, and both are useful here, because the puzzles are built on the same question of who stands where. The habit that does not carry over is expecting a fight to punctuate the solving.
Players who bounce off the comparison usually bounce because they wanted escalation: a chase, a boss, a set piece under pressure. This game offers a remedy, a physics problem and a creature that needs help, in that order, and then repeats the pattern across an open map rather than pushing towards a climax.
The comparison, side by side
| Game | Players | Combat | Shared with Hela |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unravel Two | 2, co-op | None | Small creature, large natural world, puzzles over fights |
| Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons | 1, two characters | None | One player covering two bodies, the Shade problem |
| It Takes Two | 2, mandatory | Action sequences | Co-op puzzle design that demands a partner |
| A Way Out | 2, mandatory | Action sequences | Two-player structure, entirely different tone |
| Split Fiction | 2, mandatory | Action sequences | Two-player co-op set pieces |
| Hela: of Mice & Magic | 1 solo, 2 local, 4 online | None | The reference point |
Where the look and the pacing come from
The map is drawn from northern Sweden: forest, meadow, wetland and cave, seen from a mouse's height. That choice of source material is the strongest signal of lineage, because it is the same instinct that put Unravel's creature in a Scandinavian landscape rather than a fantasy one.
Pacing follows from the same decision. Without combat, a session is a walk with problems in it: find the material, brew the remedy, work out the physics, help the creature, move on. Games built around two-player set pieces interrupt that rhythm constantly, with chases and fights, and a player who wants the walking to be the point will feel the difference within minutes.
What the comparison leaves out
The brewing loop has no equivalent on this list. Gathering plants and materials, turning them into remedies, and applying those remedies to physics puzzles is the spine of the game, and it is what the trailers spend their time on.
The Shade System is the other gap. Being able to conjure a second version of yourself is a solution to the classic co-op problem, the one where a single player cannot hold two ends of a puzzle at once, and none of the comparison titles attempt it.
How to check the resemblance yourself
The demo is the direct test. It is a self-contained story on its own map, runs 30 to 60 minutes, and supports solo play and two-player local split-screen, which is enough time to feel the movement, the gathering loop and the scale of the world.
It closes on 9 November 2026 and runs on Steam, Epic Games Store and the Xbox PC App with full Steam Deck support. For anyone deciding between this and a two-player compulsory game, the demo answers the question in one sitting, and it answers it for free.