BEHIND THE SCENES
Pixel-Art Perfection
FEZ Pocket Edition
Indie designer Phil Fish—a self-described control freak and perfectionist—doesn’t just tinker and tweak. At one point while creating the acclaimed console hit Fez, he scrapped the art and started over from scratch—despite the fact that every pixel in this stylized game had been painstakingly drawn by hand.
“That might have something to do with the game’s five-year development cycle,” he jokes.
Fish’s obsession paid off. Fez—a hybrid of adventure and platformer games—is a shining example of how to marry two genres that often don’t go well together.
Set in a colorful land inspired by the 8-bit era, the game opens with a red fez drifting down to your unwitting hero, Gomez. Once he dons it, his previously 2D existence transforms into a 3D one and the quest begins.
As Gomez sets out toward new worlds, he needs to collect hidden cubes. Often the biggest challenge is finding them, since they hide in the spaces between dimensions.
A platform that appears to dead-end at a wall on the 2D plane, for example, might reveal a hidden doorway to the 3D one. A walkway that appears unreachable in 3D morphs into 2D as you draw nearer. The game is as much a perspective puzzle as anything else.
“At some point during development, I came up with the rather silly term Mystroidvania to describe our particular flavor of nonlinear platforming, exploration, and obtuse meta-puzzles,” explains Fish. He cites Mario, Zelda, and Tetris as the game’s three main influencers.
Like those classics, Fez has a memorable chip-tune soundtrack—this one created by famed game composer Rich “Disasterpeace” Vreeland.
“The score is the glue that holds the whole thing together,” Fish says. “It’s the game’s soul.”
Fish enlisted the aid of BlitWorks, best known for its iOS renditions of Broken Age and Invisible, Inc., to bring Fez: Pocket Edition to iPad and iPhone. The finished product is a pixel-for-pixel replica of the original, complemented by new touchscreen controls.
Fez is a deep, challenging adventure, and it can be tricky to keep track of the ever-shifting world. Fish’s tip?
“Whether this is your first time exploring or you’re revisiting, remember to bring a notebook.”