Video Games as Art: Fez

Fez is a recently released videogame by Montreal-based Polytron Corporation, infamous for it’s five-year, drama-filled development cycle and outspoken designer Phil Fish. Polytron is a small indie outfit made up of artist/designer Phil Fish and programmer Renaud Bedard. Fez’s chiptune inspired soundtrack was composed by Rich Vreeland, with sound design by Brandon McCartin and additional animation by Adam Atomic. In March, it was awarded the Seamus McNally grand prize at the 14th annual Independent Games Festival.

Fez has been described as “Phil Fish’s attempt to walk around inside a cubist painting.” You play as Gomez, a 2D creature inside a seemingly 2D world, until one day, with the power of the titular fez, he discovers that there is a third dimension waiting to be explored.

Unlike most 3D games, which use perspective projection (the way the human eye sees, with further objects appearing smaller), Fez uses orthographic projection to create the illusion of flatness while looking at the world from one of four distinct perspectives. The way this is done is incredibly striking - only while rotating the camera can you glimpse a full view of the world in front of you.

As you explore deeper inside the world of Fez, you witness the environment become increasingly unstable with visual glitches, computer crashes, and black holes. Fish has retrospectively described this motif as a reflection of his life during the development of the game. In Indie Game: The Movie, he elaborates on the legal divorce with original Polytron cofounder Jason DeGroot, his father falling ill with leukemia, to the team’s funding grant being rescinded halfway through development.

Video Games as Art: Proteus

Proteus is “a game of pure exploration and discovery,” as creator Ed Key describes it. “Kind of like a wandering simulator,” he says with a laugh. It features an unusual but beautifully abstract soundtrack by David Kanaga, a composer from Eugene, Oregon, of whom very little is known about.

In Proteus, music and sound are deeply intertwined in a way that I’ve never quite seen in other games. A sonorous storm cloud glides down, and brings with it a melodious serenade of raindrops, while a family of fireflies chimes excitedly before passing on. The sweeping of dusk turns an airy tune into the calming heartbeat of night. Every element of the world, from the smallest flower to the sun in the sky, has its own voice.

Recently, Proteus was nominated for the Nuovo Award at the 2012 Independent Games Festival - an award that celebrates innovation in game design. Key described how he originally envisioned Proteus as a much more traditional type of game, in the vein of Oblivion or Skyrim - epic Western-styled role-playing games based around branching quest lines and progression treadmills. But after hitting a wall with the design he contacted David Kanaga about the idea of working with him. It was this initial spark of collaboration that gave birth to the modern incarnation of Proteus.

Beyond the sublime use of iconic sound design, what I find most fascinating about Proteus is the way Key lures you into exploring the world of Proteus with the use of living entities like frogs, rabbits, and other fauna. In a recent interview he described the way players would see one of these and start chasing it, and before long they would be over the mountain, and would see some really cool things along the way.