Introduction

What is Fez? Fez is a game that looks like this:

But it really looks like THIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZfnxKB9HCM

(And it sounds like this)

It's a really good-looking game with a really immersive, relaxing atmosphere. It's the kind of game you put on at the end of the day to calm down and just go. Something you look up from and realise that two hours have gone by while you play, and that you've explored so much that you're twenty rooms away from where you started. There's lots of nooks and crannies with secrets to find, some good puzzles, some great music; and one of the most infamous development histories behind it.

But we're not going to focus on that. We're going to focus on the "relaxing" part of the game. And so I only have a couple of rules for the thread:

1) DO NOT TALK ABOUT PHIL FISH - I'm not saying we can't say anything bad; I'm going to say bad things about the game when they come up, because the game is by no means perfect, but since the odds are pretty high that nobody here actually knows Phil as a person, I don't want to hear any discussion on the kind of guy he may or may not be based on any interviews or tweets you may have seen. Separate art from artist and appreciate the work that went into this.

2) DO NOT SPOIL ANYTHING - You might be aware that Fez has some pretty deep puzzles, whether by word-of-mouth or playing the game yourself. That is true, but I'm LPing the game in two halves. The first half is EXPLORATION MODE, where I'm going to explore every inch of the map that has cubes and cube bits in it. Once we've collected all 32 cubes and ascended to New Game Plus, we'll begin PUZZLE MODE, where I'll cover all of the proper puzzles in the game. If you know about the puzzles and their solutions, please don't say anything until I cover them. If you haven't played the game and this is all new to you, you might be able to piece together some solutions in Exploration Mode. Feel free to discuss puzzles if you're new to the game and genuinely haven't seen them before, I encourage you to collaborate with other people in the thread who haven't seen the puzzles, if there are enough of you. Collaborative puzzle solving is, in fact, completely intended as part of the game's design.

3) DO NOT DWELL - Like I said, I'm not going to heap praise upon every aspect of the game, but try not to get caught up on the bad stuff. There isn't enough of it in the game that it should be ruining your fun with it.

4) WATCH IN HIGH DEFINITION AT 60 FRAMES PER SECOND - This is more of a suggestion, but since YouTube allows for 60fps videos, I recorded the game that way, and it looks really good at 720p 60fps, so I do encourage you to watch that way if you can.

And now, unless I'm forgetting something important, let's all take a deep breath…

…

…and exhale. Let's begin.

NEW GAME - EXPLORATION MODE ACTIVATE!