Fez and Portal are perfect partners in this short free mashup
Feztal turns a one-off YouTube skit into a compelling case for a dimension-twisting puzzle game.
Phil Fish may have infamously cancelled Fez 2 almost a decade back. But thankfully, a curious mash-up has given the blocky platformer new life (and the vague promise of cake).
Released back in June, Feztal is a short proof-of-concept from Krzyhau, who you might recall from those cursed Portal 2 maps earlier this year. As part of a long-running series that twisted Valve's puzzler into wild "what if?" scenarios, he posted a short video that asked "what if Portal 2 was Fez". Turns out, it only took around a month to discover it'd make for a damn fine puzzle game—though I'd somehow missed its full release before now.
It's a shame I did, mind, because it's shocking how naturally Portal's mechanics fit into Fez. That game, if you don't remember, was a 2D platformer that let you rotate the world along a 3D axis to explore and solve puzzles. Adding portal-able surfaces that persist between dimensions feels like an effortless addition to that form.
But Krzyhau has also absolutely nailed Fez's aesthetic. Yes, he's flat-out cribbed a few sounds and animations here and there, but from a bespoke title card to a synth-flavoured reimagining of the Portal soundtrack, Feztal really does feel like an official spin-off. The only shame is its length, getting its point across in only a few screens that last maybe 10 minutes, ending in a room scrawled in Fez's fake language (itself a puzzle that Krzyhau notes may require "end-game Fez knowledge").
That said, what little there is has plenty of legs. And whether it's from Krzyhau or someone else, Feztal makes a strong case for a full game based on this marriage of mechanics. Feztal is currently free to download over on Itch.