Pajama Jam #3 from har0ld on Vimeo.
FEZ is out. I followed everything since the day they won the IGF in 2008 which feels like three decades ago.
The game is out and there are bugs. 5 years, one programmer and pretty nasty bugs -corrupted saved data, reboot and stuff-. I’m at the same time amazed that that kind of bug is making it to a finished and approved product on a console (MS, what the hell?) and at the same time, Renaud Bedard did a fantastic job at coding everything, even a complex audio system (we really need a real MIDI engine instead of reinventing the wheel each time). Chapeau bas.
It’s funny because Polytron/FEZ make me “love them and hate them” at the same time. Love the indie, hate the 360 (I hope nobody ever releases a small game as a console exclusive, ever. Oh shit, Sound Shapes). Love Phil’s open mouth, hate his open mouth. Love the colorful artistic direction, hate 8bits, old school platforms.
Like Jesper Juul says, “Fez is surely supposed to be interestingly old-school & challenging, but I think this type of puzzle worked much better when you were 12 and only had a single game – and you were playing it with your friends on long afternoons.”
Then this article (or this one) seems to nail what a lot of players find as a negative with FEZ: meh platforms and mind-fucking puzzles so hard that people wonder what’s the point.
FEZ was like the next Braid, the next “indie sensation”. Five years later, it seems like it’s not. It’s OK, making games is hard but I feel that winning the 2012 IGF Grand Prize, shouldn’t really had happened. Antichamber or Botanicula seem so fresh compared to FEZ, I don’t get why they didn’t win, they could have used some PR. I know Polytron is friend with IGF judges and game journalists and they all have parties together and stuff so when I hear that really, it doesn’t change anything with judging games I can’t help but think are you fucking serious?
And then it hits me: we are an incestuous micro scene focused a little too much on the past, our achievements and our limitless nostalgia.
Anyway, if you have a kid and live where rainy days are the default, FEZ might keep you warm. And busy.
5 replies on “Polytron and me”
So true. It’s a disgrace Fez won, it should have been Antichamber.
Ah, lets be real here. Even if Fez didn’t win the Grand Prize, it would have gone to Frozen Synapse, Joust, Dear Esther or Spelunky, with one of the honourable mentions (e.g. FTL) taking the 5th nomination. Me and Botanicula did both get stage time as winners in other categories.
I’m really glad Antichamber got funded but the IGF definitely messed up this year…
your bass guitar is hurt!?
Hey Alexander,
Sorry, comment stuck in the machine :) You are right, at the end plenty of people could have won and from the outside, I feel like it should have been the case.