FEZ

Interesting take on the platforming genre. A 3D masterpiece!

Fez would be close to my favourite game of all time, it's not often that you come across something, that resonates with you to the degree that it has with me. To me playing it is an experience, I would place it in a similar category to Outer Wilds, Hollow Knight & Elden Ring amongst others. Every so often a game comes along where the final result is greater than the sum of it parts.

At it's heart the game primarily revolves around puzzles, within the framework of a platform game. However, the platforming elements are purely a means of traversal, there are no enemies to fight, nor can you die. The focus is primarily on the puzzles, they range from fairly simple early on to nigh on impossible to do on your own in the endgame. I think that the sort of people who would only look to a guide as a last resort, are the ones who will get the most out of it here. The major aspect of the gameplay loop, the perspective shifting is difficult to explain, but one of the most brilliant concepts I have come across. The z-axis only exists whilst perspective shifting, watch a video or try the demo available on various platforms, once you begin to grasp some of the finer implications it's a thing of beauty.

A simple but vibrant and charming art style, the characters (especially the player, Gomez) have many subtle but very expressive ways of conveying emotion and I can't help but be drawn in. I would also say that the soundtrack is one my favourites of all time, quite chill & melancholy in general, with happy & darker undertones at times, to me it really conveys the experience of exploring on your own, the loneliness of being amongst the very few who are aware of the true nature of the world.

It's definitely not a game for everybody, but when it clicks, I don't have words, if you know, you know.

One of the most well-known indie games of all time, and for good reason.

Long but thorough review of why I dislike this game.

First off, Fez is a platform-puzzler, but it primarily platforms, with the puzzles being... less than desirable.

First, the platforming. This is where the game almost shines. The concept of switching perspectives is uncommon, and allows for some potentially unique platforming. Unfortunately, the majority of the platforming content is the same copy-and-paste style with little variety. Far too many segments involve simply alternating a series of jumping onto a small platform and then changing perspective, rinse and repeat. The perspective shift concept is very underdeveloped in general, I feel.

Additionally, nearly every single area is void of unique ideas. Almost every area is a vertical tower/cliff/some sort of climb, with essentially no horizontal platforming levels. There are also no enemies, and very few obstacles outside of gravity. There are a few mechanics, such as bombs to blow up breakable walls, boxes to put on switches, and levers to rotate for various reasons, however the problem is that these mechanics are criminally underused, and virtually never appear outside their respective small regions. They introduce an idea, play it straight with little variation, and then it just never comes back anywhere else in the game. It's just gimmicks that aren't fleshed out at all.

Now let's talk about Blackholes. These are areas of space that "kill" you (you respawn on the last safe ground touched). Now, although a small few are fixed and always appear, the majority of the Blackholes either appear or not based on the whims of RNG. An island can either be covered in Blackholes or not, with the Blackholes appearing the same fixed position each time they spawn. Essentially what this means is that sometimes, the platforming challenges on some islands will be slightly more annoying and tedious than normal. This is a terrible, and adds nothing to the game. It just wastes time when you have to backtrack dozens of times.

Now, one controversial topic is the inclusion of fall damage. That is to say, if you fall too far, you'll "die" and re-spawn back where you fell. I actually think this is a good mechanic because it ensures that when you inevitably fall, you don't lose your progress climbing whichever endless upwards climb you're on. Now, the downside is that, if you have to go downwards, which isn't uncommon in this game, it's a complete pain. You can grab vines/other grab-able walls to stop your fall, but only if you haven't fallen too far. If you do fall far enough, you lose all control and become helpless. I believe falling into water stops your fall safely, but this is never especially relevant in game due to water only appearing in the Ocean ("Natural region") area. If there was a mechanic to let you fall easier when you wanted to, in a controlled manner, then this would be fine, but as it stands I found myself rather annoyed about having to take the slow way down every time.

So then, what is your objective? The objective is to collect all of the cube pieces. There are 32 Gold Cubes and 32 Anti-Cubes. The Gold Cubes are either found as a whole piece, or further split into 8 small pieces. The Gold Cubes are obtained from platforming and the partial pieces are scattered just about everywhere requiring you to check every nook and cranny in every perspective on every island. But honestly, that's not so bad. The Anti-Cubes, however, are generally obtained from solving "puzzles", and are much slower to obtain.

Now, let's talk about the puzzle aspect.

This game pretends to be a puzzle game, but the majority of the puzzles are very disappointing and don't actually require solving anything. You simply know what to do, and then spend most of your time just executing the solution, rather than solving for it.

To begin, let's discuss the cryptography puzzles. It should be no surprise that this game includes it's own fictional "language" and number system. I say "language", because it's just English written in a cipher. There is a lot of text written in this language, which is called Zuish. Fortunately, despite what many people say, you do not need to decode any text in this game to get the true ending. It helps for lore possibly, and is needed for some Easter Eggs in the endgame, but for the main game it's not required. It's not hard to translate the text once you know the cipher, but it's very tedious to translate it one letter at a time, as there is no auto-translation feature at all. As for learning the cipher, you can either crack it through normal cryptography, or find the one room in the game that supposedly acts as a "Rosetta Stone". Unfortunately, this Rosetta Stone is in English only, so if you aren't a native English speaker, you very well may be out of luck, despite this game boasting to support many other languages.

Now, the number system is a lot more interesting, and is one of the parts that I actually really enjoyed. I've never seen this particular number system before, and it's taught in a very clear, yet puzzling way. Learning the number system is required to get all of the Anti-Cubes,.

Lastly, there is a third type of code system, which involves encoding a "password" so to speak. This is also taught well by the game (although by chance, it unfortunately happened to be the very last area of the game I went to, due to the game's extreme open-endedness). However, the good ends there. Once you know how to decode the passwords, it's very repetitive. The game spams this password system and it stops being a puzzle the instant you know how it works, which makes about a third of the Anti-Cubes completely trivial. And that's not even considering the very irritating backtracking, as the game decides that half of these password should be locked, for no reason, behind the first ending.

Now, there is another type of collectable, the Maps. These are maps of certain rooms that mark points of interest. The puzzle is twofold, both finding the room and then solving what you need to do with them. The maps aren't particularly hard, but they are a nice addition that varies the gameplay, and some of them are actually quite unique.

Other bad puzzles include a "puzzle" of simply waiting for the right time (or changing your computer's clock instead of waiting for the entire week to pass), the "puzzle" of "Do you have a QR scanner?", and a series of "puzzles" where you'd better have stereo audio instead of mono, and you have no way of knowing that you need stereo audio if you don't have it.

But one of the biggest offenders of the puzzle system is that there are some Anti-Cubes that are just... duplicates. Multiple unrelated puzzles can give you the same Anti-Cube, in a sort of "you only need to solve one of these". This is awful. Normally, the world map keeps track of unsolved puzzles. But let's suppose you solve puzzle A that gives the same Anti-Cube as puzzle B. The game will claim that both puzzles are solved on the world map, even though you never solved puzzle B and you won't know why it's suddenly no longer tracked on the map. Also, sometimes they aren't even tracked on the world map, and you just have bits and pieces of puzzle B that you can never solve because you got the reward for it from something else and have no way of knowing.

And the biggest issue I had was where the world map erroneously claimed that a puzzle that didn't have an alternate reward, and that I didn't solve, was allegedly solved. This was the last Anti-Cube I got, and only after going through a list of every one on the wiki.

This game has many more flaws, such as the endings being nonsensical seizure-inducing fever dreams that explain nothing nor provide any closure, and the game's mascot companion named Dot being literally useless in every case, except one specific out of place dialog from them, but I'm out of text space in this review.

Overall, this game felt like it just wanted to waste my time.

This review is a Yes, but with caveats. It is a phenomenal puzzle game that makes you go "whoaaaa, cool" all the time whenever a new puzzle solution becomes apparent to you. Super pretty art, amazing soundtrack, all the works.

However, the game genuinely feels like none of the people who programmed it have ever played a platformer before in their life. Jumping is floaty and momentous, and it's very difficult to change air momentum at all. Ledge grabs, mantling, and climbing are incredibly sluggish and unrewarding, but you have to do them constantly, and they almost never go how you want them to. With climbing in particular, it feels like there is a huge input black hole AND delay that eats and misinterprets your directions.

I had an incredible time playing and 200%ing the game (except for the heart cubes because I looked them up and I felt dirty, especially since one doesn't even have a known solution outside of getting the code from datamining), but I feel like my time spent with the game would've been filled with significantly less "god damnits" and "oh fuck offs" if they had cooked the platforming juuuust a bit more before deciding it was a good foundation for a complex puzzle platformer.

If you want to feel like an inter-dimensional traveler this is a good choice for that yes!

A wonderfully clever game, that plays with perspective in incredibly creative ways. The main game takes 3-4 hours to beat, but after that there are hours of additional puzzles with codes and ciphers galore. Tons of fun.

فكرة مميزة و تطبيق ممتاز

الغازها اغلبها ممتازة
ممتعة و فيها تحدي بسيط
لكن بعضها يحتاج شيرلوك ولا باتمان عشان يحلها ف لو تبي تختم اللعبة بكامل الغازها بدون نت قدامك رحلة طويلة

bought this years ago and only got so far. recently got the urge again and its really interesting with its puzzles and fun

This game is AMAZING. Steam doesn't track playtime properly when offline, but the in-game time reads 14 hours after all achievements and 200%. The normal puzzles and the metapuzzles are all really good, the platforming is not super difficult and you do not have to swap perspective midair for 95% of the game. My only criticism is for completionists like myself who want every room on the map to be checked off, in the black monolith room you have to stand on the other side of the pattern that the treasure map shows and input down, down, rotate left, rotate right, rotate right, jump, up, to get the third and final heart cube. There is no known way to find this code in-game. Decrypting the language was fun, but a lot easier than games like TUNIC, since one room gives you a complete key if you know what to look for. Regularly goes 50% off, and is definitly worth it.

A fantastic puzzle game through and through. Super satisfying to slowly understand the secrets of this vibrant world.

Still one of the best puzzle games of all time

Even if getting full completion is absolute insanity in terms of what you'd have to do without looking up the solution (stupid heart)

Last time I played I remember being stuck because this game decided you need to understand its language which encryption is based on the english language. There's a room with a rosetta stone and the famous 35 letter pangram (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog). Very bad experience for non native english players.

"Só porque não vês nada, não quer dizer que não esteja lá."

FEZ é um jogo que te apresenta um mundo 3D com uma visão 2D, mundo esse que consegue trazer puzzles tão elaborados dentro dele que você pode até achar que eles existem no 4D.
O jogo não tenta sair da sua premissa como um jogo de puzzle com uma pitada de plataforma, mas a execução dessa visão é simplesmente impecável.
Não acho que seja um jogo para todo mundo, mas, para aqueles a que essa descrição ressoar,
a recomendação vem forte. Esse jogo é uma experiência, e, apesar de ser relativamente curta, é prazerosa de início ao fim.

I know what Phil Fish did. I coundn't beat this game without a guide, but maaaaaaaaaaan was this game such an epic odyssey. Since the first tune fork puzzle i did, i loved the game with every cell of my body. I recommend it with a full heart. Hope you like it gamers!

Pleasant pixel art, nice controls (remappable, although the jump is a little floaty and might need getting used to), great music, clever puzzles. Interesting game overall, if you like meta puzzles and cryptography (code-breaking) this is the puzzle game for you

I haven't completed the game and basically giving up. After a certain point, the puzzles are incredibly complex and sometimes breaking the fourth wall (as I found out while looking for a guide). But the main game mechanic is simple yet incredibly cool. I can only recommend it to experience a different perspective and it's not meant for a casual gamer like the trailer makes it seem. The intended audience are those who enjoy strong puzzles that require lateral thinking and decrypting codes. It's amazing that something like this even exists.

A 2.5D platformer indie game where all the purpose is to collect cubes from many different areas. I'd say it's rather a child's game and very short for a grown-up. The only outstanding mechanic is that you can change your "perspective".

As we know, one of the best indie games of all time. Play, relax, enjoy

There's plenty to keep you occupied for a decent few hours and the detail is ingenious. I think if this was published in 2024 it would possibly be criticised for some of the design choices which make this difficult to play if you have difficulty reading small symbols on a screen.

My favorite shape is the square, because a cube does not exist. Oops-

Great puzzle platformer! This game is a classic for a reason. If you want to enjoy the world and beat the game it's not too difficult. If you want to 100% the game and unlock the "true" ending then it is borderline impossible without consulting a guide.

艺术风格很好，我很喜欢

Wearing glasses made my vision clearer in real life, and in the game, wearing a hat made my thinking sharper, which transformed my perspective from 2D to 3D.

Game is cool, quite short though but amazing quality for a 11 years old game. Lasted me 10 hours to fully complete the game, some of those collectibles were quite challenging. Have and will reccomend

I would've liked to explore the game more, but I feel I was forced into ending the game with no way back. Now I have to start everything over again if I want to explore what's left.

The game is absolutely awesome for a very long time and I would say that going to at least 190% of it is worth it for the journey ! More than that is the hope of completing the game is kind of wasted time honestly and kills the magic of the first moments.

Very solid game anyway !

I love this game, great music, cool concept, fun puzzles, but also quite challenging!

i l()ve t|-|e @%#$%@!!!!!!!!

no funny review this one is good

One of the greatest indies on the platform. Stop reading and play it.

super fun game and amazing soundtrack.

great puzzles. navigation was a little annoying though, especially when trying to backtrack

Thinking about that hat
Oh, and the game's good in everything it does

Pros:
1) Puzzles! They're great. Love the core mechanic and the pacing of new tools.
2) Extremely useful map that is honest about when you're done/when there's something else to do.
3) Writing. "But there's barely any dialogue in the game!" Exactly. More time for puzzles. Your tesseract buddy is also always there to help with small mechanics, so no wasted chunk of tutorial time.
4) Aesthetics. The entire package is great, and you can tell a lot of care went into polishing the graphics and audio. There were a few puzzles that were charmingly synced to the background music, for example. The various environments all look fantastic.

Cons:
None of these are game-breaking but I wanted to air grievances just a little.
1) Repeated puzzles, especially near the end of the game.
2) Movement feels slow, especially during platforming. I would not recommend playing this after Hollow Knight or Animal Well, for example, because you'll feel sluggish.
3) Backtracking when you start a new game mode on the same file. A mild exception to my praise about writing.

Without saying a single word FEZ takes you through a journey from not knowing how the world around you works, to decyphering an alien language through the use of equations in an incredibly intuitive and natural way. Other than maybe Outer Wilds, this is the "Metroidbrania" design at its peak. Out of the 64 puzzles in the game (even tough not all of them feel unique, there are a few repeats) only 1 stuck out to me as kinda odd. It was kind of janky to experiment with and the solution isn't even clear unless you know a specific piece of geometry trivia, or maybe I'm just salty because it's the ONLY ONE I had to look up help for :,).
Overall though, if you're looking for a brain buster, you're bound to have a fun time with FEZ.

A truly wonderful game.
Its so good I bought it twice.

i got this game several months ago from a friend recommendation and played 1 hour and dropped it, now, almost 6 months after that i came back to it and oh my god never in my life have i seen a game so simple have such complex puzzles keeping me engaged to the game for hours without getting bored of the same screen always trying different combinations to solve the puzzles, really really good game

An excellent concept with a lot of cool ideas. Being able to warp to an area after reaching the "end" of that line of nodes would make it so much more enjoyable. Navigating through this map was aggravating.

Playtime: 16.4 hrs
I heard that this game was a legend of sort in this genre. Well, it certainly matched its reputation. Very well-made game with a fantastic graphic style and gameplay design. Some of the puzzles were very challenging but still no doubt quite fun playing them. Shame that they didn't make a sequel or a similar game.

this is what I see off the percs

funny hat

I Have Finished This On Another Platform But I Just Had To Buy It Again... If I Could Forget a Game And Play It All Over Again From The Start It Would Be Fez... a Very Different Type Of Puzzle Game And Going For 100% Complete Is Where The Real Challenge Is... Doing It Without Any Help Or Cheats/Walkthroughs Will Test Your Sanity... Thank You Phil Fish

Head Hurting Adventure

super late to the party, but I really loved this game. fun perspective platform puzzles with just enough background plot. and just when you think you have it all figured out theres a whole other perspective waiting to smack you in the face. hours of fun, 10/10 reccoment

What a curious and fascinating game. The gameplay is 2D but the world is 3D (and you're the only one who knows it). So you've got to flip rooms around to see what's on their sides, which gives you different platforms to jump on, and that's how you navigate each level. Speaking of navigation, the world map is hard to decipher, so that's one of the cons. But the artwork is fun, jumping around is fun, the gameplay is forgiving not frustrating (no long game over screens).

Fez is the perfect puzzle game, where there are some mysteries so complicated that you will feel like a moron for the simplicity of their solutions, and others so deceptive that the magnitude of your ignorance will constantly expand until you are forced to admit that you have been outsmarted.

The platforming is quite boring, this is a puzzle game first and foremost, but there is a lot of time spent traversing and backtracking through the world over and over . 100% completion is kind of trivial, and mostly for showing you the world and where to find the more complicated puzzles. Max completion is 200% but there are some seriously insane cryptographic puzzles after that

You won't need pen and paper for a while, but you will need them for 200%. To keep this vague, There is at least one type of puzzle that "conveys information" faster than I could process or record it, I knew how to solve it but I couldn't keep up so I didn't feel bad about looking up the solution.

A nice and sweet Indie platformer turned puzzle game. Good to play for a couple of days or a week. Many of the puzzles in the game may require pen and paper, which I would suggest over looking at a guide.

if only he had a fedora instead

The best way I can describe FEZ is if Mario Odyssey was a 2D indie game that focused around a different core mechanic than cappy. The main mechanic in this game is changing your perspective (with LB/RB respectively on controllers) to view puzzles & levels in new ways.

By that same virtue, FEZ is of course a collectathon in which the main goal is to (OF COURSE) collect a bunch of items scattered across the various levels of the game - in this case cubes. The levels are varied and diverse with beautiful scenery, music & atmosphere reminiscent to me of games like Minecraft which also came out at a similar time period. It's a very relaxing game overall as you can't actually die or game over and the only annoying levels are way towards the end of the game, meaning the average player probably won't even have to deal with them if they aren't going for 100%.

My only real gripe with the game is that some of the puzzles are extremely obtuse (so obtuse in fact that one of them had the entire FEZ community band together to solve it over many months of trial & error) so I would not recommend going completely blind if you are aiming to collect 100% of what this game has to offer. A lot of them involve hitting certain inputs in the right order to spawn a cube to collect such as 'RBLBRBLBLB' etc which can definitely get annoying for the average player.

To counteract this though, the vast majority of the puzzles are fun & simple and mostly involve exploring the world including all kinds of different levels ranging from spooky graveyards to cyberpunk style towns which is where a lot of my comparison to the 3D Mario games comes from.

Overall i'd give FEZ a solid 8/10 & highly recommend picking it up if you like puzzles, collectathons &/or relaxing games.