Reviewers commended the game's emphasis on discovery and freedom, but criticized its technical issues, in-game navigation, and endgame backtracking.

It had sold one million copies by the end of 2013, and it influenced games such as Monument Valley, Crossy Road, and Secrets of Rætikon.

The player-character Gomez lives peacefully on a 2D plane until he receives a red fez and witnesses the breakup of a giant, golden hexahedron that tears the fabric of spacetime and reveals a third dimension.

After the game appears to glitch, reset, and reboot,[2] the player can rotate between four 2D views of the 3D world, as four sides around a cube-like space.

[1] Other platforming elements change with the level themes, including crates that activate switches, bombs that reveal passages, and pistons that launch Gomez airborne.

The exploratory parts of the game feature a series of arcane codes and glyphs, treasure maps and chests, and secret rooms.

[1] These sorts of puzzles include hidden warp gates, enigmatic obelisks,[4] invisible platforms, sequences of tetrominos,[2] a ciphered alphabet,[8] and QR codes.

[4] Its homage includes Tetris tetrominos inscribed on the walls and in the sky, The Legend of Zelda treasure chest animations, Super Mario Bros. mushroom levels, travel by pipe, and floating platforms.

[5] Fez's New Game Plus mode adds a first-person perspective feature[13] and lets the player revisit areas to collect "anti-cubes" from harder puzzles.

Although their partnership broke down due to creative differences, the entirety of Fez's design, story, and art descends from this game mechanic.

Fish received a Canadian government loan to open Polytron Corporation as a startup company and began full-time work on Fez.

[24] Fish borrowed from friends and family to keep the company open and considered canceling the project[25] before the nearby Québécois developer-publisher Trapdoor offered to help.

[29] Fish is shown preparing for Fez's booth at PAX East 2011, an earlier show, in the 2012 documentary film Indie Game: The Movie.

[30] Near the end of Fez's development, Fish told a Gamasutra reporter that he had received positive feedback from IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer and Braid designer Jonathan Blow, but that he felt "burnt out".

[13][54] Ars Technica described the apparent end to Fez's harder puzzles as "anticlimactic",[55] but Fish told Eurogamer in March 2013 that hidden in-game secrets remain to be found.

[56] More than three years after its digital launch, Fez received a physical release designed by Fish and limited to a signed edition of 500 in December 2015.

[3] Fish made 2D pixel art in Photoshop for each side of the trixel,[h] which Bédard's custom software compiled into 3D game assets.

[24] Fish cited Myst as an inspiration and compared its open world, nonlinear narrative, and "obtuse metapuzzles" to Fez's own alphabet, numeric system, and an "almost unfairly hard to get ... second set of collectibles".

[38][i] He was also inspired by the Nintendo Entertainment System games of his youth (particularly those of the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series), Hayao Miyazaki's signature "open blue sky", "feel-good" atmosphere,[6] and Fumito Ueda's Ico.

Fish sought to emulate Ico's feeling of nostalgic and isolated loneliness, and Ueda's development philosophy wherein all nonessential game elements are removed ("design by subtraction").

He wrote it after meeting Bédard but before discussing the soundtrack with Fish, and based the composition on Fez audio created prior to his arrival.

[76] Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku wrote that Fez's sound effects evoked Jim Guthrie's Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP audio.

[34] Janus Kopfstein of The Verge called the work "fantastic" and described it as a cross between a "1980s Vangelis synth odyssey" and a submerged vinyl record from an arcade.

[7] Welsh heard influences of 1960s English psychedelia (Pink Floyd, Soft Machine), 1970s Krautrock (Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk), 1980s synth (Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis), and Erik Satie.

[97][l] The New York Times called Fez Fish's "tribute to 1980s gaming ... lovingly, almost excessively, devoted to the golden age of Nintendo".

[10] Arthur Gies of Polygon described its aesthetics as "so retro it hurts", citing its pixelated look, chiptune soundtrack, and ways of clueing the player without explicit guidance.

[2] Welsh likened Fez to a 1970s, peace-loving, surrealist version of 2001: A Space Odyssey as imagined by Shigeru Miyamoto, and foresaw its social status as "the darling of a certain indie clique" with "studied hipster cool".

Fez 2 was announced as "one more thing" at the end of the June 2013 Horizon indie game press conference, held during the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo.

In an episode of the GameTrailers show Invisible Walls, Beer criticized Fish's response to questions about Microsoft's Xbox One self-publishing policy change.

He described the argument as "an out" stemming from his frustration after Indie Game: The Movie made him a public figure and the obligation of trying to build on Fez's success by creating a sequel he did not care to make.