Developer Polytron launched its Xbox Live Arcade game Fez on Friday to much critical acclaim. However, many players have taken to Twitter and message boards to complain that the title (which was in development for over five years) suffers from numerous graphical hitches and worse. Polytron had been dealing with each user’s issue on a case-by-case basis on Twitter, but now the indie studio has posted an update on its website asking anyone with “a game-breaking problem” to email support@fezgame.com.
Reported bugs include the main character clipping through walls and falling out of the level, hard crashes that require a system reboot, and a jittery framerate which GamesBeat reviewer D.F. Smith mentioned in his review.
Polytron detailed some of the worst-case scenarios in its blog:
“A small subset of older Xboxes with smaller hard drives can’t run the game at all. The game has trouble running off a USB stick. Crashes are occurring in specific levels or situations. In a rare situation (exiting the game from the “wall village” interiors), the save file becomes unusable. Nasty stuff.”
The team says that it is working internally and with Microsoft to fix everything. “It makes sense to issue a patch, but we don’t currently have an ETA on it,” wrote Lead Programmer Renaud Bédard.
While save-file-murdering glitches are a very scary proposition, a handful of gamers seem to feel that some of the minor bugs fit in perfectly with the game’s old-school charm.
“There’s a secret t0 [get wall glitches] to happen at will. A secret I don’t want to share because it’ll get patched out if I share it and then I won’t be able to have fun with the game anymore,” reads a post on the Gamespite.net forums from user Morbid Coffee.
GamesBeat will have an update once additional details are established for a patch to the popular title.