Earlier this week, we shared with you our impressions of the Splitgate 2 demo at PAX East 2025. While the demo showed off some of the visual updates and gameplay changes between the original Splitgate and Splitgate 2, it was limited.

Players could only utilize one map at the event and forcing players to play with a keyboard and mouse, this last part seemed semi counter-intuitive since the game will be launch on consoles at the same time.

Despite the forced playing aspect, the demo was still an enjoyable experience. After playing the demo, we had the opportunity to speak with one of the game’s creators. You can find our Splitgate 2 video interview as well as a full transcript, from PAX East 2025 below:

Matt from Niche Gamer: Hi, thank you for showing me the Splitgate 2 demo. Could you please introduce yourself to our audience?

Ian from 1047 Games: Hi, I’m Ian Frewin, the CEO and co-founder of 1047 Games and also the creative director. We make Splitgate 2 and Splitgate, of course.

Matt: Earlier, you were saying that the project was originally like a dorm room project?

Ian: Yeah, so it was originally like my Senior project?

Matt: Senior project?

Ian: Yeah. So I actually started Splitgate in the dorm room during my senior year at Stanford. It was my senior year project, almost 10 years ago. I never had any ambitions at the time to turn it into anything. Just kinda had this idea. Thought I wanted to combine my two favorite games, Halo and Portal, and then I built it.

I had a lot of fun with it, showed it to my friends, and realized, “All right. I can’t sit around hoping somebody else makes my dream game. I gotta go do this.” Obviously, it’s evolved a lot since then, and now with Splitgate 2, it’s evolved quite a bit. The game also has a lot of Titanfall inspiration as well, but, uh, that’s been quite the journey.

We’re really excited about letting others experience Splitgate 2. The Open beta starts on May 22nd on all platforms, PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. Then the final copy is a little bit later.

Matt: So, when can people expect the full release of the game?

Ian: The final copy’s a little bit later. We haven’t announced that yet, but what we have said is once it’s on, it’s on.

Matt: So the beta is effectively launch?

Ian: Yeah, it’s basically a soft launch; it’s not, like, we are going, this is not a week-long beta. This is “The lights are on.”

Matt: Now, is the beta just gonna be anyone could download, or will you need a special key?

Ian: Splitgate 2 is Free-to-Play. Anybody can download it; it will be available on Steam, Epic Games, Windows GDK, or Windows Store, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X. So we’re coming to a lot of different platforms at the same time.

Matt: Okay. Now, will it have cross-play or cross-progression?

Ian: It will. Cross-play and cross-progression.

Matt: Now, how are you gonna do competitive with cross-play? Console only against console? Or?

Ian: We’re still figuring that out. Um, not ready to talk about ranked yet. But we’ll definitely have a competitive portion to the game.

Matt: Now, with going from Splitgate 1 to Splitgate 2, was there anything, like, out in the industry that you kinda looked at and were like, “I wanna take something from this,” or?

Ian: Okay, I guess the truth is, like, not really. We just kinda wanna make a fun game. I think the biggest thing, personally, that I felt with Splitgate 1 of, like, just selfishly, “How do I wanna make this more fun?” I’m like, “Well, I love Titanfall. I love Titanfall 2.” I look at it like, what are the games that are out there? I kinda missed that. I was very sad when Titanfall 3 got canceled.

I’d say, like, with Splitgate 2, we’re definitely still about the portal mechanic; it is as iconic as ever. I’m a huge fan of old-school Halo gunplay, so that has very much been preserved. I’d say the biggest change and inspiration is just in movements.  Like, Splitgate 1’s movement was very basic and floaty, and it worked. Splitgate 2‘s movement is just so much more. You can slide down hills, gain momentum. You can jetpack. You can kinda chain that with the portal, and it just feels so meant to be. Like combining the portal mechanic with that style of movement. Um, it just goes hand in hand.

Matt: Now, with shooting through the portals, how does that mechanic work? Has it updated between games? How do you get the mechanic to work?

Ian: You know, that was not too challenging. It’s all math. There were definitely a lot of technical hurdles, I’ll say, especially with Splitgate 2, we’ve done a lot to optimize the portals and just the game in general. We are basically just doing line tracing. So you shoot the gun. What’s the angle it hits? Where does it hit? Okay, it should come out on that same angle on the other end.

Matt: Earlier, you said you brought in a former Call of Duty and Halo director. How has their addition to the team really impacted the game?

Ian: They’ve just leveled us up, right? So we hired Halo’s audio director, and we hired Call of Duty’s animation director. They’re just beasts. They’ve leveled up the team. They’ve pushed us. They’ve brought everything to the next level. I, I don’t know how else to say it other than just they’re freaking talented and great people.

Matt: Earlier, you said that you’ve been playing through the Halo games. Did you play Halo Reach?

Ian: I’m playing it right now, actually. I’m in the middle of replaying it with one of my teammates. We are currently playing through the campaign. Like, the audio design or for Halo Reach, that multiplayer was more of what the vibe I was getting. But even like Halo 4 versus Halo 3, which would seem more slow-paced. I love Reach.

I wouldn’t say that there was any intentional inspiration from Halo Reach specifically. More just we love Halo, and I’m sure that, Tajin, the audio director, was subconsciously being influenced by that, just as I am. But we’re really trying to make our own thing here. Same as CoD.

I mean, I think one of the things our animation team does is one of the reasons he wanted to join us; he wanted to do something different. We love CoD; he loves CoD, but he was really interested in doing something a little more stylistic and less tactical. And so you’ll notice a lot of the way our animations are, it’s very sporty. It’s very, you know, you’ll see the players flip the mag; there’s a lot of inspiration from sports versus just tactical military.

Before CoD, he worked on Ratchet and Clank, and so he has been around, and I think that’s what’s fun to him is exploring these different styles.

Matt: With Splitgate 2 coming out, is there anything like that you’ve kind of thought about that you haven’t implemented yet? Like, a goofy level design or like multiple portals being a thing? What about even having multi-layered platforms where you get half the portal up, and then like an angle?

Ian: We’ve experimented with some crazy stuff. I don’t know if it’ll ever see the light of day. There are things that we are working on. Like, there’s a season two game mode that I just, I wish we could get it for launch ’cause I didn’t have this idea until way later.

But I’m like, “Oh my God, this would be so sick.” So, that’ll come out in season two. We also have a lot more coming that is gonna be at launch and released during the beta.

Matt: With Splitgate 2 coming out, we expect that there will be new levels to try out. 

Ian: In regards to level design, let me circle back to my previous thoughts. So with level designs, we’re big fans of just like experimenting and trying stuff, right? We made this map where it was like two worlds that were sort of inverted, and the whole floor was a giant portal. And so, if you jump through the portal, you go up and you are now on their field basically making you look like you are shooting up.

So you can have these interactions where I’m in this world shooting down through a portal at people who are upside down to me. But they are right side up, and the rest of it is very buggy and has poor performance. I  don’t get your hopes up that this will ever turn into a thing. That’s the kind of experimentation that just no one would ever think of that and we’re just like, “Holy shit, that’s sick.”

Matt: Will you have any custom game modes or a mode where people can make custom maps? Could that eventually be added?

Ian: It could be, you know, it would be a lot of work, but there are a number of things like that that we will actually do, that we are doing, that I’m not gonna talk about yet. But that’s one of the ones that was like, “Wow, that’s cool.”

So we haven’t announced anything specifically about that. What I will say is, Splitgate one, we did have a very basic map creator that we released post-launch.
Halo Reach Forge is actually the reason I got into game development. Like, I loved building maps 

We have teased, haven’t announced anything yet, but we did tease the idea of infinite maps, which you can kind of form your own conclusions on what that might mean. Um, but if you look at our teaser trailer, it might give you some clues.

Matt: Okay, cool. All right. Thank you for having me/showing me the game.

Splitgate 2 is set to launch later in 2025 across Windows PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and PS5.