FEZ

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At first glance, FEZ is a retro platformer. Yet most of the typical platformer elements, retro or otherwise, are not present. There are no enemies, no powerups or ability upgrades, no reserve of lives, no fire, ice, or water levels levels, no lazers, no deadly decor. The object of the game is as simple as it gets, walk, jump, and climb to explore the world and find the required cubes, the optional anti-cubes, and the optional artifacts. But, this is much more challenging than it sounds.
Gameplay depends not on defeating anything but on understand relationships between game mechanics that people almost never think about. The main concept is viewing the world of 90° angles in 2D but with the ability to rotate the Z-axis of the world 90° in any of the 4 directions. 4 differing views present 4 different layouts for world interaction. Two separate or far spaced surfaces viewed from some angles are joined or close when view and different angles. Visible doors, ladders, objects are hidden in some angles. Open areas are inaccessible in some angles. A button may be located on the far edge of the screen, even behind a wall. But rotate the world and the main character is now touching the button without having moved at all. Tracks that carry floating platforms can be disconnected until rotating the world connects them. Three short ladders on a wall can become a single tall ladder. More advanced levels include 3D slices of the world that rotate independently based on timing and/or player control. There is also the occasion typical platformer element, but it must be used in conjuncture with the unique gameplay. For instance, picking up a bomb and throwing it to land directly in front of a sealed door to break the seal. But the bomb can only seen and picked up at a certain angle, the door is only seen at a different angle, and floating platforms and impassible walls from all four angles must be traversed to deliver the ticking bomb to the sealed door before it explodes. Also, certain elements of the game respond non-intuitively to player input. For instance, lights on a given pillar will light up in a particular pattern for each move a player can make. Jump button, 2 trigger buttons, and 4 direction buttons each have their own icon indicated by the lights. You can imaging how things can get complicated when the main character's movement in the game world intended to operate a puzzle can simultaneously drastically alter which items and areas are accessible (and perhaps make the reword for the puzzle inaccessible). Upgrades of a sort do exist in the game. Not for the main character, rather the player is upgraded when they discover yet another way to manipulate the world to go to places seemingly inaccessible. With this knowledge upgrade, the player can then return to an area and go new places within to find objects that were obscured in previous visits. Most of the 'keys' and 'switches' in this game exist only within the player's mind. Though there are some actual keys and switches in the game as well. The gameworld is rarely spoiled by display of information of information on top of it. A notable exception is dialogs, which are often redundant anyhow. An example, a pillar with a hole and a cube in the hole is encountered. Players will probably think 'I wonder what this is'. A hint hypercube floats close to the player when they approach the pillar. Viewing the hint tells the player "I wonder what this is." Nevertheless, the same hypercube will show a thumbnail of the level a door leads to if the player has seen the level previously. There is also a sort of anti-metroidvania element to the game. As the player explores more areas, solves more puzzles, and collects more objects, voids appear in the world which will suck the player out and kill them. Thus, mobility is hindered by game progress rather than being helped. Yet again, this forces the player to try new things and discover new ways to take advantage of the relationships between game mechanics.

zerothis # 2018-08-13 22:06:35 - .com/

software: FNA, Lutris, MonoGame,

hardware: Gamepad, Keyboard,

display: voxels

port of
FEZ (X360)

version of
FEZ (Windows)