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She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant Microsoft press release today: “Microsoft today announced that Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, the console adaptation of the hugely popular PC game developed by Mojang, has broken all previous digital sales records, selling more than any other title in the first 24 hours on Xbox LIVE Arcade.” [That's an excerpt.]
The soundtrack to Fez officially released on Friday, at a pay-what-you-like price (with a minimum of $US7). Because the entire game is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, some enterprising folks went and opened the sound files in a spectrogram and, voila, they found even more clues.
After its launch on Friday, “about 20 THOUSAND PEOPLE (!!)” supplied “more testing” than the game had received in the past five years, according to Polytron programmer Renaud Bedard. “So, as it happens, bugs popped up. Some pretty serious.”
The first thing that appealed to me about Fez, an independent puzzle platforming game developed by Polytron, was how adorable it was. If my childhood proved anything, it was that eight bits of detail can still make me squee with delight. I instantly knew that I would need a plushie version of Gomez, the main character that sports a cute little red fez atop his Pillsbury doughboy-like form.
Fez, the perspective-shifting platformer and poster-child for independent games development hell, is ready to go and will arrive April 13, says its studio, Polytron. That’s Friday the 13th, a fitting irony for something that’s been in production for more than four years. The game will be offered over Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft points, or $US10.
I’ve bagged on Polytron and Phil Fish and the development hell in which they’ve been stuck for four years. And Fish recently said some intemperate things about Japanese games development, and gamers. Standing apart from all of that is Fez, which just looks sensational in this six-minute video of gameplay from its trial version. And by the looks of it, the game should be coming soon. Like “Q1 of Q2 2012″ soon, maybe?
How long has Fez been in development? I can remember my pal Sander going all OMFG showing me this video of the thing while we were goofing off at work. That was before I worked here.
Fez, which is going on four years in development, was delayed to “early 2012″ way back in September, so at least this luxurious long shot of the perspective-switching indie platformer isn’t some oblique way of saying “BTW, it’s been pushed back again.” That we know of.
