Fez

Fez

           At first glance, Fez's squeaky-clean, pixelated aesthetic is a love letter to the classic platformers which defined the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Look beneath its shiny veneer, however, and discover a dimension-breaking, landscape-shifting, super-intelligent puzzle game that breathes new life into the old-school sidescroller formula. Exploratory by design, Fez side-steps limited lives and boss battles, and instead encourages players to experiment. You do this while traversing a truly gorgeous world, conversing with an array of whimsical characters, and interacting with a slew of glyphs, treasure trails, and secret rooms, all in a bid to restore the fabric of spacetime. Fez's groundbreaking rotation mechanic in essence delivers a 2D puzzle game inside a three-dimensional world, and as a result, keeps you guessing from beginning to end.