Why Fez is more than just another retro platform game

By now, you’ve probably heard all about the long-in-the-making indie game, Fez. And if you own an Xbox 360, it’s also possible that you’ve played it. Released last Friday to hugely positive reviews, Fez is currently sitting at the number one spot on XBLA's download charts.

If there’s any justice, Fez will continue to become a word-of-mouth hit that takes on a life of its own, as web forums hum with shared advice and hints at secret locations. But while some commenters have greeted Fez’s arrival with enthusiasm, there appears to remain a certain group of webusers who aren’t quite convinced by what, on the surface, appears to be just another indie platform puzzler. And let’s face it, we’ve had no shortage of those.

But although Fez, with its gentle world of cuboids, spacial puzzles and platforms appears to be formed from the same mixture of nostalgia and genre experimentation seen in, say, Braid or Limbo (two games commonly mentioned in Fez reviews), it’s actually far more than this - and far more ambitious than a casual few minutes’ play might suggest.

Adorable, pale-faced protagonist Gomez (wearer of the title’s magical hat) traverses a blocky world in search of cubes, the fragments of a mystical hexahedron which, if not reconstructed, will tear a hole in the fabric of space. Leaping from platform to platform, solving puzzles and searching for clues in dusty rooms and forgotten islands, Gomez’s quest might sound painfully generic, but a jab of the left or right triggers reveals an engaging twist.

Fez’s worlds, although apparently 2D, can be rotated to the left or right, revealing that every pixel is, in fact, a tiny cube floating in space. Each area can therefore be viewed from any one of four angles, meaning that a platform apparently out of Gomez’s reach is, when seen from a different viewpoint, actually right by his feet.

Like an interactive version MC Escher’s spatial riddles, Fez’s discrete landscapes - some sprawling, others enclosed and tiny - become mind-bending sandboxes, where nothing is quite as it first seems. Although such perspective-altering puzzles aren’t unique to Fez, and have been seen before to a certain degree in games such as Echochrome or Super Paper Mario, the sheer ingenuity of Phil Fish’s level and graphic design makes it feel entirely fresh.

Fez is made even more refreshing by its refusal to cave in entirely to the demands of the traditional platform game. Unlike, say, Super Mario Bros, the threat of death is entirely absent. If he falls too far, Gomez will simply be whisked back to the last solid platform he was standing on. There are no lives, no continues, and no combat - something which could have made Fez a rather tension-free, dull experience. Instead, it emerges as one of the most tense and absorbing games to emerge in years.

With the grim reaper banished, Fez emerges as a game about the joy of discovery rather than precision or coordination - even though you’ll need plenty of skill and cunning to gather all the hidden cubes and unlock all of its secrets. Uncovering a hidden room or discovering a whole new area, full of traps, puzzles and items, brings with it a genuine thrill, heightened further by the dreamlike atmosphere each environment brings.

Gomez will find himself in areas battered by rain and illuminated by lightning. He’ll traverse dank catacombs that look for all the world like an old monochrome Game Boy game. He’ll search for cubes among weird cogs and levers to the strains of Rich Vreeland’s weird, Vangelis-like chiptune compositions. Walls are covered in the strange runes of a forgotten race. There are thrones, arcane frescos which may or may not offer clues, treasure maps, keys, and a weird obsession with owls.

Much has been made of Fez’s loving recreation of retro videogames. There are nods everywhere to Tetris, The Legend Of Zelda and other classic titles, but there’s more than a hint of Monty Mole or Jet Set Willy in Fez’s intimate, puzzle-filled rooms and fascination with collecting items. But Fez reaches even further back, to the infancy of videogames, when they were little more than a few vector lines or a handful of blocky pixels. There are references to the more recent past, with MS-DOS boot menus and gentle nudges at the lazy habits of 90s-era game designers.

Ultimately, Fez proves to be not so much an homage to platformers past, but a kind of survey of the entire history of videogames from the 70s to the present. Its gameplay, which rewards curiosity rather than punishing poor reflexes, points to roughly where the medium is now, in our post-arcade, post three-lives-per-coin era, and its atmosphere and ability to evoke a sense of sheer joy hints at where it could go next.

This is why Fez is so much more than just another retro platformer. Even its viewpoint-shifting mechanic, which could have seemed like just another glib gimmick in lesser hands, becomes almost metaphorical. At a time when so many games have become more about refinement than innovation, along comes a platform puzzler that reminds us that even the most familiar of genres can still fill us with wonder. All that’s required is a bit of imagination and a change of perspective.

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.