FEZ - Cave Story 2 meets Super Paper Mario? =o
 

It's not really Cave Story 2, nor is it from Pixel.

But since you're here, you might as well enjoy what it actually is, which is to say a very lovely looking retro-style platformer from independent developer Kokoromi. The game recently won the award for Excellence in Visual Art at the 2008 Independent Games Festival.

Besides looking and sounding like a somewhat spiritual sequel to Cave Story, the game has a neat 2D to 3D viewpoint switching system, endearingly playing around with level design and space, in the style of Echochrome and Super Paper Mario.


Just watch the videos and you'll get it.

Trailer

GDC08 gameplay


No idea as to how the full game will play though. Whether there will be a story and continuing structure to the whole thing or if it's just a collection of seperate levels, whether you have more things to do than just collecting those tokens and (possibly) getting to the level end. Either way it looks refreshing, cute and extremely charming.


No proper website for the game sadly, but keep an eye on the developer's blog.
Kokoromi Collective - Fez

Yeeesss <3 Saw the trailer for this yesterday and I put on my amazed happy face. It makes Super Paper Mario's 2D/3D flip look like a pile of dinosaurs trapped in a Betamax player. The music in the trailer's really nice, too!

Well hello there, FEZ. Lookin' pretty good! I'll be keeping my eye on you. :3:

(Love the feel of this game...Qwaky's mentioning of Cave Story and Paper Mario is spot on)

I want this game... I didn't know it was on PC, which frankly puts me off a little bit. If it were for PSP, for example, I'd be all over this like stink on shit. I'm also interested in Super Paper Mario, but that game is on a system I don't own.

Then again, if it was on PSP, it wouldn't look like that. At all. And you can always play it with a controller on a PC.

That's more tactics, as simply typing Fez wouldn't catch attention at all~

Yup, I'm not gonna lie. Cave Story 2 is what grabbed my attention. Nice tactics, there. *highfive*

Looks like they're following the same idea as Crush (PSP) and Echodrome (PSP/PS3). The whole "shift perspective, now the level is different" idea isn't new, but this is a cute way of going about it.

Of course you're right. I have a USB adapter for PS2 pads I assume I can use. I've mainly been using it for emulators so far, but hopefully it will work.

I'd just rather it be on anything but PC... even if that meant a downgrade in the visual or auditory quality. I just... don't like playing games at my desk.

I don't know why Qwarky thinks that it wouldn't look the same on PSP.

I mean, here's a trailer for Crush, and it has better graphics than FEZ does, just a lower resolution...
Gametrailers.com - Crush - Trailer

This certainly does look good, and I agree, putting it on something like the PSP would be a great idea (might give me a reason to dust the old PSP off). Definitely something to keep an eye on.

So am I the only person here who is kind of pissed off at the blatant plagiarism? I mean, at least echochrome offers a different twist on the Super Paper Mario idea. This looks just like the same old shit, and they even have the nerve to rip off the Cave Story's signature graphical style. Games like this are the reason why there needs to be copyrights on gameplay concepts. If I don't see SPECIAL THANKS: PIXEL AND THE SUPER PAPER MARIO TEAM in the credits I'm going to write a an angry nerd rant and post it on the internet. I'm disappointed, they should know better than that.

I didn't say it wouldn't look "as good" on the PSP, I said it wouldn't look like that at all. Have you seen a proper sprite based platformer on the PSP lately? They constantly go for that 3D characters on 2D movement look that Dracula X Chronicles and Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins do. Same applies to Crush.

I'm sure you'd admit though, that's a per-developer choice they are free to make. It doesn't prove that every developer will choose that style. It's a popular style, sure... but there's no reason not to do a pure 2D platformer, or even a hybrid 2D/3D style like this.

Additional Spam:
How many games did you see that looked and played exactly like the original Super Mario Brothers? I could probably name a couple of dozen if I dug back into the recesses of my cranium. I didn't care then, and I don't care now. Some of them were just as playable as Super Mario Brothers, and that was the important part. I don't care just how lacking in originality a game is, so long as it has the decency to steal ideas from the best and bring them together for a fun gameplay experience.

This game looks at least a hundred times more appealing to me than Super Paper Mario, anyway. I like Mario franchise games pretty well, even the RPG branch, but I prefer something else most of the time. Mario has been done to death.

I watched the trailer for this and was incredibly confused. I hope turning the environment around like that becomes second nature after you play the game for a while! Didn't know it was on the PC though. :P

Love it's style and the ideas though. The butchered speech is well funny too. :D

Looks fun. I'd check it out if it were on a platform I use for gaming.

But I don't see how anyone can honestly reap too many praises on a game that so blatantly plagiarizes other releases.

I dunno about anyone else, but from what they taught us in my college was this:

"It's too damn hard to have "originality" anymore in the world. The better idea, is to grab hold on an existing idea, and try to think up new ideas/expand from that"

Good way to get you started on the path to creating something important.

The blog updated with a video of Jason DeGroot playing a remixed version of the Fez theme at a Tokyo retro game party Fami-Mode.

Really liking dat music <3