I don’t think I’ll ever forget the experience of playing Fez for the first time. It was 2012 and I was still fairly fresh out of college, having moved to New York City in 2011. Since I didn’t have much disposable income at the time, it was the rare period of my life where I was completely out of touch with gaming for a few years. I didn’t own a modern console or a handheld. Thankfully, one of my roommates had an Xbox 360, which gave me a chance to keep up with blockbusters like Borderlands 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3. One day, he called me into the living room to check out a weird little game called Fez he’d found on Xbox Live Arcade.

It completely blew my mind. It was my first real exposure to the rapidly-growing independent game scene of the era, and it felt like a revelation because of it. The perspective-shifting game was unlike anything I had ever played. It was an impossible magic trick that impressed me more than any big-budget game chasing flashy realism at the time. Looking back on it, I’m comfortable saying that it built the framework for my taste in games and changed how I thought about gaming as a medium. I just wanted more.

Two years later, I just as vividly remember watching the game’s creator, Phil Fish, publicly crash out on social media and cancel Fez 2. It was a bummer at the time, but one I’ve come to accept was the right move in my maturity. The world never........

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