This weekend marked the birthday of the impressive indie game FEZ. Creator Phil Fish, of two-man development team Polytron, wrote a blog post to celebrate the anniversary on Saturday.
“FEZ was released a year ago today. A fact i find impossible to believe. But i’ve checked the calendar. I’ve done the math, and it adds up.”
FEZ was finally released on Xbox Live last year after much delay. The story of the game's development is documented in Indie Game: The Movie, along with the stories of Team Meat when making Super Meat Boy, and Jonathan Blow and his highly successful game Braid.
Though FEZ is an incredible game, with a unique core principle – 2D platforming in a 3D world – wrapped in layers of exploration and puzzles and secrets, it had the misfortune of arriving in the same year as Journey and so has won very few awards. Fish doesn't seem fazed by that, however, as he thanks fans for their support. He says he has been “much happier” this year, and that the game has “really found its audience”. In fact, FEZ has sold 200,000 units on Xbox Live Arcade in the year it's been out.
So what's next for the game? FEZ is due to launch on PC in two weeks' time, on May 1. Despite leaving Polytron a while ago, Renaud Bédard has been working on the PC version and says that he's “very happy that the game will finally reach a broader audience”. Fish echoes the sentiment, “hoping the game will reach more people than ever before”. In fact, he's so keen for more people to play it that he even says “steal it if you must”.
Have you played FEZ yet?
