The game I played was Fez, which was created by Polytron Corporation in 2012. The game is HEAVILY targeted towards players (of all ages) who enjoy exploration and spending a copious amount of time for exploration and completionism. The video game is available on PC and consoles as of today, and I played on the PC version.
In Fez, the mechanics of the game significantly slow down the pace of gameplay, which shifts focus away from intricate platforming and to exploring the world. This is likely an intentional choice — the environments are extremely detailed and filled with branching paths. As a result, each scene often require several traversals and reviews to fully understand. The game also uses its novel perspective switching mechanic to both hide and reveal information for the player. This rewards players who take the time to slowly construct a mental image of the world. However, the clunky platforming and heavy amounts of backtracking creates for a tedious and frustrating traversal experience, which is ultimately at odds with the intended fun of exploration.
From the onset, Fez frames itself as an exploration-based and completion-based game. The very first mechanic that the game introduces to the player is collection of golden cubes as a form of currency that unlocks progression. In the “tutorial” stage, the player must collect all 8 of 8 available cube fragments to proceed to the rest of the game. This immediately creates the dynamic where players are incentivized to play for completionism. The “economy” of golden cubes is as scarce as it can be in the beginning, so players expect to have to hoard their cubes to progress. This dynamic should foster fun through discovery — especially depth-first discovery, since a player will feel like they must collect all of the cube fragments to move on.
However, the level design of Fez is very interconnected and non-linear, which works against the mindset of completionism fostered in the tutorial stage. Very early on, I found myself confused as going through unlabeled doors brought me into wildly different environments. And in each of those environments, there were exits that branched off into further levels. Since I expected self-contained rooms when I entered each door, I felt like I was being dragged away from my completionist objective against my will. In retrospect, the architecture was purposefully designed this way to encourage repeated traversals and backtracking as a means for the player to get to know the world better.
Although, the intentional backtracking is made extremely difficult because of a lack of good navigation tools. The map of the game is very difficult to parse when you start playing the game (when you need the map most…). It’s laid out as cubic nodes in a 3D map, with edges connecting the nodes that have pathways connecting it. The main problem is that the thumbnails of the nodes are tiny, and the map locks itself into an awkward isometric view that obscures some nodes behind others. This creates a dynamic where players are forced to make a mental map in their own imagination to keep track of which doors they have taken. Some may argue that this adds to the fun of exploration and challenge, but I personally found it took much of my attention away from the core gameplay itself.
The core mechanic of perspective rotations is the one of the strengths of Fez. Since the world is 3D and the player can view the game through 1 of 4 sides, they can only ever have 25% of the level on screen at any given point. This promotes fun for hardcore explorers but tremendously adds to the mental load needed to keep a strong understanding of the space. The mechanic is also the key driving force behind the platforming puzzles in the game. It utilizes clever tricks to let the player travel in ways that are impossible in 2D. As a result, the level architecture can contain more interesting paths for the player to explore.
Perspective switching also leads to some frustrations. One example is the rotating platforms, which forcibly cause your perspective to rotate periodically when standing on them. More importantly, this happens while the player is still trying to make a mental map of the space. This promotes an unhealthy dynamic where players are incentivized to repeatedly trial-and-error these platforming sections instead of taking time to experience the world, which defeats the main exploratory fun of Fez. This would normally introduce fun as challenge, but the general clunkiness of the platforming limits this. The jumps have no variable height, which limits player skill expression. The air momentum is also incredibly difficult to reverse, leading to many unintentional oversteps.
In terms of narrative, Fez has very little to offer for the average player. The only narrative present is the embedded narrative present in finding our the purpose of the cubes and anti-cubes, and deciphering the hieroglyphic script throughout the game. The issue is that the embedded narrative doesn’t have a payoff until the player has completely finished the game, which makes the game devoid of narrative for most players.
An interesting ethical question that Fez brings up is the idea of the main character being the only “chosen” Fez-ian who can manipulate the third dimension. In the spirit of the Platonic Allegory of the Cave, it raises the question on whether the main character is obligated to enlighten the 2D characters (although they don’t seem to care in the dialogue). Perhaps it is also important to think about the main character with all of the power is more “important” than the sidelined NPCs.
