polytron
Latest
Fez fan art takes that spreadsheet joke to a whole new coordinate
In 2011, Fez developer Phil Fish said, "PCs are for spreadsheets." When he announced Fez would hit PC, fans and haters jumped on the "spreadsheet machine" dig. After Fez's successful XBLA and PC launches, this fan art by Steam user McKack is a good stopping point for the joke. All the jokes, even.
PSA: Fez flips platforms, lands on PC today
One year after its high-profile launch on XBLA, Fez is available on PC via Steam, the Humble Store and GOG today for $10. For $5 more on Steam, grab the game and its super-cool original soundtrack by Disasterpeace, or grab the soundtrack by itself for $7. Steam: Giving you all the options to spend your money. By April 13, Fez sold 200,000 copies on XBLA and we thought it was positively joyful. Creator Phil Fish suggests hopeful PC players purchase Fez via the Humble Store, since he gets 95 percent of that revenue, compared to 70 percent from Steam and GOG. If Fish insulted your grandmother and you really want to get back at him, go ahead and buy Fez through Steam or GOG and have a wonderful time playing it. That'll show him.
PSA: Fez dons its pre-order cap today on Steam, GOG
Xbox Live Arcade indie darling Fez has entered its pre-order phase on both Steam and GOG today, offering a buck off the $9.99 asking price for early commitment. Fez will launch for Windows PC across both digital distribution platforms on May 1.The PC launch is the first action in a plan by creator Phil Fish to port Fez to "pretty much everything." PSN and PS Vita, Mac, iOS, Linux and Ouya ports are all in various stages of development and planning, Fish has said. In little over a year, Fez has sold more than 200,000 copies on Xbox Live Arcade.
Fez PC pre-orders turn the tables on Steam, GOG on April 22
For all you patient PC players itching to get your mitts on XBLA indie hit Fez, mark your calendars (probably take off those mitts first): Fez pre-orders open on April 22 via Steam and GOG, and the game will be 10 percent off – $9 – until it launches on May 1."No more waiting for a thing to actually be out before you can buy it! No more keeping all that pesky money to yourself! With our patented pre-order technology, we take your money today and give you something later!" Polytron's official pre-order announcement evangelizes. "Spend money and save money! At the same time!" Now that's a deal.We found 2012's XBLA version of Fez to be joyful, challenging and deeply satisfying as a puzzle platformer. That edition has sold 200,000 copies to date, and eventually, the game should be out on "pretty much everything," including Mac, Linux, Vita, Ouya and iOS.
Fez remix soundtrack out April 20, will keep you up at night
A special remixed soundtrack album celebrating Fez's first birthday will be released later this month. Entitled, FZ: Side F, the album features Fez's music remixed by various artists, including the game's original maestro, Disasterpeace.The first track, "Synchrosynct," is available to stream right now, with the full album launching on April 20 for the pay-what-you-want price of $5 or more.Just when you'd forgotten all about the many, many mysteries contained in Fez, they pull you back in.
Fez sold 200,000 copies on XBLA to date
Fez, Polytron Corporation's cute platforming game that made it into Joystiq's Top Ten of 2012 list, has sold over 200,000 copies on XBLA to date. The game crossed the 100,000 copies mark in late May 2012.The figures come from creator Phil Fish, who took to Polytron's blog today to discuss the one year anniversary of Fez's release. Fish recently noted during a Reddit AMA that the game "should eventually be out on pretty much everything." Fez will arrive on PC on May 1.
Fez coming to Steam May 1
A Windows version of Polytron's infinite puzzle dimension portal, Fez, will be released on May 1, as revealed by the game's new Steam page. Like the XBLA version, it's listed as developed by Polytron and published by Trapdoor.The Steam page does not show any new features, but at the very least it'll be easier to take screenshots of all the beautiful things you'll see, and, for the sake of your own sanity, the occasional screenshot of a glyph you hope to translate later. Patches should be easier too.If you'd like to start the fun before the release of the game, you can ask creator Phil Fish anything on Reddit right now.
Joystiq Top 10 of 2012: Fez
Years of hype, several delays, a self-destructively outspoken developer, framerate stutters, game-breaking crashes, and now post-patch blues. While I don't agree, I can certainly understand why some have little time for Fez even before getting into the game underneath all the mess. That's a shame, because the game is an absolute peach.The Fez I played back in April, which crashed nine times in all and stuttered on numerous occasions, was worth the tribulations and then some. I raced through it across the release weekend, throwing myself at the challenge of finding all the cubes hidden within the cryptographic platformer, and doing so without any outside help whatsoever (OK, maybe a little). It should have been a maddening exercise of frustration and ire, but instead I had an airy grin plastered across my features throughout.
Fez coming to other platforms in 2013
In a sweet "State of the Polytron" post, Fez designer and sole Polytron employee Phil Fish revealed plans to port his cryptographic adventure game to platforms beyond XBLA in 2013, potentially platforms with friendlier policies toward updates. "Yes, i've heard you, dozens of people emailing me everyday telling me how much of an idiot i am for not porting FEZ to everything," noted Fish. He also teased future developments relating to Disasterpeace's soundtrack for the game (which you can buy here) and "something about a US branch" of Polytron.Fish also reaffirmed plans for two more games, and expressed interest in designing non-game projects. "I want to design everything," he said. "Maybe not a videogame? Maybe something else entirely. I JUST DON'T KNOW."
Fez going half-off on XBLA for one day only
Phil Fish's mysterious, beautiful puzzle platformer, Fez, will be available for half off on Xbox Live tomorrow, for one day only.That means it's down from the usual 800 Microsoft point price to 400 Microsoft points, or $5. At that price, you'd be crazy to pass up the game we said "burns with a brilliant, red-hot, yellow-tasseled flame."
Microsoft responds to Polytron's Fez patch claims
Developer Polytron issued a statement two days ago, saying that a save issue affecting a small number of Fez players would no longer be resolved with an additional patch. Microsoft, who Polytron laid the brunt of fault on for demanding an expensive fee to certify and issue the new patch, has now shared its side with Giant Bomb."Polytron and their investor, Trapdoor, made the decision not to work on an additional title update for Fez," the statement starts. "Microsoft Studios chose to support this decision based on the belief that Polytron/Trapdoor were in the best position to determine what the acceptable quality level is for their game. While we do not disclose the cost of Title Updates, we did offer to work with Trapdoor to make sure that wasn't a blocking issue. We remain huge fans of Fez."That last part is perhaps the most interesting, since Polytron claimed Microsoft's price for a new title update was $10,000 – this statement makes it sound like Microsoft may have been willing to negotiate on the price.In the meantime, you can keep playing an improved post-patch Fez, in the hopes that your save makes it through the whole adventure. Polytron says less than one percent of players have succumbed to the bug.
Developer won't patch XBLA game because Microsoft would charge 'tens of thousands' of dollars
Seeing as how so much software is moving to online distribution, the significance of this controversy might extend far beyond gaming and XBLA. For now, however, the spotlight is firmly on Microsoft and the way it charges developers for testing their games and patches, after a well-known developer made an unusually public complaint. In a post on its official blog, Polytron said it would not patch a rare game-saving bug in its popular title Fez, because Microsoft would charge it "tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game." It added that "had Fez been released on Steam instead of XBLA," the problem would have been fixed "right away" and at no cost to the developer, which strongly hints that it'll jump to another platform as soon as its XBLA exclusivity expires. Responses to the story over at our sister site Joystiq are decidedly mixed, with some folks outraged that Microsoft's high maintenance attitude could hold back improvements in this way while others suspect Polytron of blame-shifting.
Polytron bringing back Fez patch, won't fix save issues
After seeing major issues with a patch released for Fez on XBLA, Polytron and Microsoft decided to pull the patch from servers, returning the game to an earlier version. But now Polytron has posted that the patch is coming back, and it will not, repeat not, be fixing the issue where players may lose their save.Why's that? It's a numbers game, says Polytron. The patch fixes multiple issues with the game (including framerating and loading problems, death loops, and more), and the save corruption issue affects less than one percent of players overall. Because sending out another patch to fix the first patch would cost Polytron "tens of thousands of dollars" to get the game re-certified by Microsoft, the patch is coming back, and any players thus affected by the save issue will just have to deal with it.Polytron points to this as a major drawback with Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service, in that the company charges exorbitant fees to developers to release even free updates and content. "Had Fez been released on Steam instead of XBLA," posts Polytron, "the game would have been fixed two weeks after release, at no cost to us." Does that mean a Steam version is in progress? "Only a few months left to our XBLA exclusivity!" says the company on Twitter.
Fez patch pulled by Microsoft
A recent patch for Fez that fixed exploits but also corrupted save files was pulled from Xbox Live by Microsoft, according to an update on developer Polytron's blog. The issues caused by the title update could potentially be resolved by clearing the Xbox 360 cache, though now new players shouldn't be affected.We reached out to Polytron for comment, and were told the developer will "have more details as we work things out with [Microsoft] after the weekend."
Fez patch released, absolutely do not play it
The long-awaited patch for Fez has finally arrived, though you may want to hold the fanfare. While the patch does fix a number of glitches and prevents a lot of exploits and problematic "infinite death loops" (eek!), it also introduces a "fairly widespread" new problem, according to Polytron. Specifically, "the save file can be seen as corrupted by the game after installing the patch."Clearing the Xbox 360 cache "should resolve the issue." If that doesn't work, however, "there is no known workaround." In other words, you probably shouldn't play Fez until Polytron patches the patch.
Fez patch still incoming
Fez programmer Renaud Bedard has provided an update on the patch meant to handle some "nasty" bugs in the XBLA puzzle platformer. Turns out the patch was submitted on May 17, entered certification on May 21 and failed four days later due to two critical issues.Bedard was finally able to reproduce one of the issues on June 8 and the patch is back at Microsoft for certification. He estimates it'll take another two weeks for the update to hit – you know, unless there's another hiccup. He notes on the Polytron blog, "Many apologies for the delays. It was a tricky one."Fez has sold over 100,000 copies since its April launch. You can watch Polytron's labor on digital celluloid in Indie Game: The Movie, available now on iTunes, Steam.
Fez sales shift 100,000 copies across XBLA
Phil Fish (and co.'s) passionate labor has paid off with Fez having reached 100,000 sales on Xbox Live Arcade. Fish made the announcement this morning on the Polytron site. Looks like Microsoft finally gave Fish a sip of that secretive sales data.Following years of development, which made it feel like Fez had become the second-cousin of Duke Nukem Forever, the game finally launched last month to high critical praise – which is more than we can say for that cousin we mentioned.
Minecraft XBLA was profitable within an hour, broke digital sale records
Minecraft is digging its own grave with its latest release on XBLA -- and by "grave" we mean "lavish, gold-plated throne room with indoor pool and grape-feeding robots." Minecraft was profitable within an hour of its launch on XBLA, developer Markus "Notch" Persson tweeted today. That's on top of Notch's multi-million-dollar PC version.Based on leaderboard participation numbers, Minecraft sold more than 400,000 copies in 24 hours, Notch said. Minecraft broke digital sales records for the console, selling more than any other XBLA title in its first day, according to Microsoft.Earlier today, Notch tweeted that he had sales numbers for Minecraft (turns out they were the above leaderboard figures), which sparked a conversation about the inner workings of XBLA developer contracts with Fez's Polytron. Polytron still doesn't know Fez's exact numbers, even though it came out a month ago."Standard procedure" according to Polytron is "you find out how much you sold when you get your first check three-four months later." Notch thought getting immediate numbers was standard, but he avoided contract negotiation and doesn't know what it says on the subject, he replied.Minecraft also gets free updates, "which is something every other developer on the platform is told is simply not an option," Polytron wrote. Notch replied: "We had to fight for that, and we got a limited number of them. Not sure why they don't like it."We may have discovered Notch's hidden talent and secret to his success: fighting for something in a contract while avoiding contract negotiation, and winning.
How the community solved Fez's hardest puzzle
Fez players be forewarned, the following contains spoilers. Stay far, far away if you want to uncover all of Fez's secrets for yourself. With that out of the way, dedicated fans know that collecting cubes is only half of Fez. The other half is solving puzzles, some of which hide their solutions in plain sight, while others taunt players with obtuse, seemingly indecipherable clues.
PSA: Fez soundtrack now available for purchase, free streaming
Fez keeping you up at night? Do you struggle to sleep as the solutions to puzzles maliciously circle around in your brain, refusing to take shape? You might as well compliment the madness with the full Fez soundtrack. You can now stream the entire album for free, or secure a download for a measly seven bucks.Composed by Rich Vreeland (A.K.A. Disasterpeace), the soundtrack features 26 deliciously lo-fi tracks. Go ahead and give it a listen. At least then you can convince your friends that it's not just playing in your head.
