THE BLACK MONOLITH HAS BEEN SOLVED!!! - Fez 101

Summary

Game and Story

• Fez is a puzzle-platformer in which Gomez can rotate the world, changing the 2D perspective to reveal paths and platforms in a 3D space.
• Gomez inherits his grandfather’s adventuring role and learns that a third dimension exists. After meeting the cube-shaped being Dot, he must gather cubes to restore a world that has broken apart.
• The main adventure asks players to find 32 cubes. A deeper layer adds 32 anti-cubes, earned by solving hidden codes and environmental puzzles.
• New Game+ introduces a first-person view used to inspect the world and uncover additional secrets. The game’s lore is mostly pieced together from environmental details, symbols, and cryptic writing.

Gameplay and Puzzle Tips

• Rotate the world often: a route that looks blocked from one angle may connect from another.
• Watch for multiple puzzle systems:
  • Tetromino symbols encode controller inputs.
  • The game’s number system uses line positions to represent values; combined lines add together.
  • A hidden alphabet can be derived from the pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” which is arranged unusually.
• Some late-game puzzles demand careful observation, note-taking, and community collaboration. Many clues are easy to miss, and not every puzzle is straightforwardly explained in-game.

The Black Monolith Solution

• The black monolith was one of Fez’s long-unsolved secrets. Players had found ways to brute-force it, but those methods did not explain the intended solution.
• The lecture presents a solution posted by Reddit user Stone Von Holy Bless on January 23. It connects the game’s haikus to locations marked by concentric-square patterns. The haikus hint at where to look and, in some cases, how to view the environment.
• At the relevant locations, first-person inspection reveals Tetromino clues that translate into a sequence of inputs. Entering the sequence completes the monolith puzzle and awards the final heart cube.
• An older theory based on rearranging the game’s release date is described as a coincidence, not the intended answer. The speaker also notes that some clues are so obscure—or absent from ordinary play—that solving the puzzle likely required collaboration and close investigation.

Creator Background

The lecture also covers Fez creator Phil Fish’s rise to prominence, his contentious online persona, and the criticism surrounding the game’s acclaim and development. It briefly discusses the PC port’s control and rumble-related puzzle issues, as well as the cancellation of Fez 2. This background is presented as context rather than as part of the monolith solution.

Gamers and Sources Featured

• Players and attendees: Roland, Ed, Joy, Deion, Stella, and Jackson.
• Game and development figures mentioned: Phil Fish, Jason DeGroot, Jonathan Blow, Edmund McMillen, and Disasterpeace.
• Research and other sources cited: Reddit users Stone Von Holy Bless and Fra Dogger; Leon Masse; Innuendo Studios; and the Indie Game: The Movie documentary.