Fez

Fez is a beautiful, meticulously-crafted rotating exploratory puzzle platformer, emphasis on the puzzle.  The gameplay focuses on finding collectibles by unraveling a tangle of puzzles, some of which require finding an in-game cipher to decode glyphs. There is also at least one puzzle that requires information outside the game and an apparently unsolvable final puzzle–the notorious black monolith. Through brute force players have stumbled upon the solution, but three years later no one can explain the logic to get there.

I first heard of this game through the documentary Indie Game: the Movie, which dutifully catalogs various developer meltdowns, including that of Phil Fish while preparing Fez for PAX East. Fish evidently has a history with the community which has cast some shade on the game. I don’t know much about him, but having played the game it’s clear he has an active mind.

Getting 100% and the first ending allows players to start a plus game, which is required to get all the collectibles (over 200%). As of this writing I have managed about 133% without attempting any puzzles that require the cipher. I was curious to see how far I could get before I broke out the pen and paper. I had to install a QR code reader on my phone to solve some of the puzzles. The good news is all collectibles secured by QR code have alternate puzzles, for those who do not have access to such software. The bad news is this has resulted in a glitch, known as the 33rd anticube glitch, which could prevent players from getting the 64-cube ending. 

Fez is one of the most mysterious and enigmatic games I have played. It is beautifully and lovingly created, and even the glitches feel like they belong here in an odd way. It’s not a game I would casually recommend, I think the player needs to understand what they’re getting into, but if you like exploratory games and puzzles and cryptography, you ought to give it a try.