Fez jumping to other platforms this year

The joys of adventuring in a 3D world as a 2D chap, not to mention scrawling pages of notes in an attempt to decipher cryptic symbols, are coming to new audiences this year. Much-beloved spin-o-jump 'em up Fez is shedding its Xbox Live Arcade exclusivity and coming to unspecified "other platforms" in 2013, creator Phil Fish has announced.

"Yes, I've heard you, dozens of people emailing me everyday telling me how much of an idiot I am for not porting FEZ to everything," Fish wrote in an end-of-year blog post.

Many people wanted to play Fez on their PC or PlayStation or whatnot, naturally, but Fez also had a nasty clash with XBLA policies. Polytron pulled the game's first patch after a save corruption bug was discovered, but later re-released it, bugs and all, to avoid paying Microsoft "tens of thousands of dollar" to recertify the patch. The developer reasoned, "For 99 percent of people, it makes Fez a better game" but it was an unpopular decision with many fans.

Polytron grumbled, "Had Fez been released on Steam instead of XBLA, the game would have been fixed two weeks after release, at no cost to us. And if there was an issue with that patch, we could have fixed that right away."

Fish said that Fez's XBLA sales "didn't break any records," but it "made more than enough to let me keep doing what I do. So I'm afraid you're stuck with me for a little while longer." He also noted that Polytron has "a couple of new games in the pipeline."

Reflecting on the past year, Fish wrote, "Between Sundance, [Indie Game: The Movie], winning the IGF, becoming a notorious racist, the game coming out, the patch incident, becoming a notorious asshole, travelling the world, battling a brutal post-partum depression and finding love, my ears are still ringing." Bless his little white cotton socks.

Polytron was curiously once approached by 'Ville magnate Zynga about a mobile port.