“Fez” is one of the finalists in the 2008 Independent Games Festival awards. The conceit is deceptively simple: the protagonist avatar (the protavatar?) is a 2D character trapped in the 3D world. While that’s been done before in games like Klonoa 2, the difference is that in Fez rotating the entire world reconfigures platforms that are out of depth on the Z-axis in 3D to still work in the plane in 2D. That doesn’t make sense with me explaining it, I know, but watch the short clip and all should be clear.
Project Page [Kokoromi.com via Waxy]
The PSP puzzler “Crush” has precisely this mechanic.
The rotate-to-make-game-geometry-work thing is also reminiscent of Echochrome (aka OLE Coordinate System). I notice Kotaku is currently reporting Echochrome will have a March 19 release.
I love 2D platform games. This looks incredibly compelling to me.
Super Paper Mario had you either navigating a single 2D platform level, which was fine, or switching to a 3D platform version, with all the frustrating controller navigation and camera angle problems that even excellent 3D platformers (like Super Mario Galaxies) have.
It was a fun game, but “flipping” got old kind of fast.
Nice, always happy to support the indie games; hope this will show up on Steam. Their tagline is epic also: “Let’s Get Awesome!”
I’d love to play that game. And like everyone else has said, it reminds me of super paper mario.
But I think I’d like Fez more.
Looks like it could be awesome (as the tagline suggests). It would be nice to see this on Steam.
Super Paper Mario World used a similar technique, and it was fantastic.
For a “non-indie” version of the 2d vs. 3D worldview, try “Super Paper Mario” for the Wii system.
i was just about to way that it reminds me allot of super paper mario on wii!
Yeah, flipping in Super Paper Mario was nowhere near as cool as this. It was gimmicky- basically “Are you stuck? Then flip!” and the solution immediately followed. You could only flip to one camera angle in 3-D and one fixed one in 2-D as well. I liked the game well enough, but it was a bit underwhelming compared to my initial excitement at the artwork.
Crush is one of the games I have my eye on for when I finally get a PSP.