Surprise Fez patch adds speedrun mode

We probably won't ever see Fez 2, but we can console ourselves, maybe, with this surprise, whopping patch for the original game, which has just been uploaded to Steam, three years after the game launched on PC. Update 1.12 whacks in a speedrun mode, better music streaming, and various other tweaks and fixes, as elaborated in this news post over on Steam.

To access that speedrunning mode, it appears you have to type in  "--gotta-gomez-fast" after launching the game, although the post is a bit vague so I could be wrong.

Fez programmer Renaud Bedard began work on the patch over a year ago, an update he sees as the game's last:

" Since I shipped FEZ 1.11 I had little intention of making additional fixes or features to the game because I simply don’t have the time with a kid and a fulltime job… and working on FEZ is getting old after 9 years. So I did want to address problems that people have with the game, but I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life. I had spent enough time away from the game that I was somewhat enthusiastic about coming back to it, especially if it’s at my pace, and that it’s my last time doing so."

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.