Fez ‘lost’ features revealed
Fez was a huge success in our eyes. It has some of the most interesting and mind bending game mechanics we have ever seen. Recently programmer Renaud Bédard of Polytron described some of the things that didn’t quite make it into the game. It turns out there were a lot of other game mechanics in the works at different points in development. Some were early versions of the mechanics we saw and others were abandoned because they just didn’t work for the game as Phil Fish had envisioned. Apparently laser puzzles involving strict box placement were completely functional but they simply had no place for them in the game. “Heavy groups” involved large groups of blocks that would fall after supporting blocks were destroyed. This feature worked hand in hand with TNT crates but again, both features were dropped because they simply didn’t have a place in the final game. Motor blocks were a neat idea but they were too difficult to get working properly in the hybrid 2D/3D environment. We really liked the way the 3D bridge sections looked but they gave too much of how the environment was actually constructed away. It is always interesting to see what was left out of a game as much as what made it in. With Fez it feels like the possibilities are almost endless.
Source: Renaud Bédard of Polytron