Fez

Revisiting the perspective-shifting platformer.

- Andy Kelly

As you amble around Fez’s opening village, with its blue skies, gently swaying pixel grass and fluttering butterflies, it’s hard to believe the creation of this place involved so much stress and turmoil. Severe delays, loss of funding, legal disputes, multiple redesigns and other problems plagued the game’s development – as shown in the fantastic 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie. But you don’t feel any of that when you play it. The atmosphere is serene, the pace is gentle, and it’s just a nice place to exist in.

Fez released on Xbox 360 in 2012 amid a lot of noise about its troubled development, the divisive opinions of outspoken designer Phil Fish, and whether it lived up to the hype or not. So it’s nice to return to Fez now the dust has settled and appreciate it for what it is: a clever, stunningly beautiful puzzle-platformer with a neat open-world structure and one of the best musical scores that’s ever accompanied a videogame.

Composer Rich Vreeland, better known as Disasterpeace, doesn’t get enough credit for establishing Fez’s unique ambience. His score is delicate and atmospheric, like a Chopin nocturne colliding with the dreamy, sweeping synths of a Vangelis movie score – although he admits to only listening to the Blade Runner composer after hearing people frequently make the comparison. It’s one of the few game scores I listen to regularly, standing on its own as a remarkable album of electronic music.