Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Fez. We talk about its platforming and how it fits to taste, game style, and rule escalation. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: More cubes!

Issues covered: platforming feelings and taste, inspirations and how they play out here, additional move set, floaty physics, a mental game with mostly generous platforming, a game that takes place in your head rather than in your fingers, seeking high highs, sloppiness and guiding the player, no longer seeing the whole world but only the tells, the pleasure of figuring things out, checking out the achievements, how many people get everything, the craft of the game, wanting to feel capable, finding a solution that was not the intended solution, dominated by the puzzle side, those moments where you give a big "no way," extending a simple idea and iterating on it for a fleshed-out game, iterating ideas, a chain of implication, not making the leaps of logic too large, ladders that line up and teach you how to think about the world, not knowing whether you can do a thing yet, not wanting to diminish the revelations, puzzles games Brett hasn't finished and why, editorial from the publisher and Key Performance Indicators, finding a tribe for your indie game, side games, smaller and more cohesive teams, a choose-your-own-email, having an experience, leaving endings open.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Hollow Knight, Indie Game: The Movie, Phil Fish, Nintendo, Mario (series), Little Big Planet, Guacamelee, Super Mario Galaxy, Demons's Souls, Dark Souls, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Tomb Raider (2013), The Matrix, Deep Thoughts/Jack Handey, MYST, Pierre de Fermat, Megaman, Resident Evil, The Witness, Braid, The Talos Principle, Obduction, Cyan Worlds, Super Meat Boy, Fallout, X-COM, mysterydip, Mass Effect, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Twin Peaks, Half-Life, While We're Young, Noah Baumbach, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: More Fez!

Note: Amusingly, though I did not call out the actresses, Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried appear in While We're Young, and both also appeared in Twin Peaks: The Return

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