Let’s encourage Montreal indie game developer Polytron!

Fez music available for free download http://bit.ly/6WxuTW or

special limited-edition 8cm CDR at the Polyshop http://bit.ly/6gHJB4 Wooo!

Update: New teaser video:

6955 – Fez Demos EP from Polytron Corporation on Vimeo.

Independent developer Polytron (from Montreal) recently released details of their first iPhone game that’s in the works. Polytron is best known for their work on the innovative, and as yet unreleased game, Fez, a 2d/3d platformer (video). Well, no, Fez is not coming to the iPhone (as far as we know), but Polytron is working on an iPhone-specific multi-touch game called Power Pill.

At Pecha Kucha, Phil Fish presented the idea behind Power Pill which places you in control of a super medicine that is working its way through a human body. The medicine is so powerful that it can’t touch the sides of the body without causing damage. Your job is to squeeze, pull and morph the pill into different sizes and shapes in order to properly navigate the levels.

 

Canadian government funding can play a key role in the success of independent studios, and new Gamasutra-obtained data from Telefilm Canada, that nation’s federal cultural industry agency, details the extent of such funding for key indie games.

Most notably, Telefilm awarded Hothead Games’ DeathSpank, the latest project from acclaimed Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert, one of the highest amounts ever given to a video game project: an impressive $536,069 from the Canada New Media Fund. The maximum amount that can be awarded in a fiscal year is $550.000.

Fez, Polytron Corporation’s IGF prize-winning 2D/3D platform game award winner, recently confirmed for a release on Xbox Live Arcade in 2010, also received $73,682 from the cultural agency, which funds games alongside TV and film projects.

He was toiling away in a Montreal game studio Artificial Mind and Movement, one of many working on some movie-based game. The game he’d been working on it in his own time was up for two awards at the Independent Games Festival at GDC. That game was Fez.

The game stars 2D fez-hat-wearing Gomez on an adventure on a 3D platform world. The pixelated title looks like something you could have played as a kid, but didn’t — you poor bastard. Blame the M.C. Escher-esque level design and a 2D-3D platform perspective shift.

“I’m pretty sure Fez could have been made on a SNES without the 3D graphics,” says Fish. “The world rotation thing could have totally been faked by having 4 parallel 2D levels that you ‘rotate’. The gameplay here really doesn’t depend on the modern tech.” What it does depend on is some fancy programming from lead programmer Renaud Bédard.

Update: Here is a teaser video of the game Fez: