 Fez was first announced in July 2007 on The Independent Gaming Source . A trailer released in October 2007 convinced Jason DeGroot to join the development team as a producer . DeGroot , also known as " <unk> " , first met Fish at a 2006 E3 party , and started work on the game 's soundtrack and sound effects . The soundtrack was ultimately composed by Rich " <unk> " <unk> and the sound effects by Brandon <unk> . The game was nominated for two awards at the 2008 Independent Games Festival ( <unk> ) at the Game Developers Conference ( <unk> ) : Excellence in Visual Art and the Design Innovation Award . As Fez was a side project , Fish was employed full @-@ time at Artificial Mind and Movement in Montreal , where he worked on a tie @-@ in game for a film . He was not permitted time off to attend the event and thus decided to quit his job in January 2008 — a moment he later marked as " when I became indie " . The game won " Excellence in Visual Art " , and created a surge of public interest in the game concurrent to a similar swell of interest in indie game developers . Fish received a Canadian government loan to open Polytron Corporation as a startup company and began full @-@ time work on Fez . In July 2009 , Polytron announced a release for Xbox Live Arcade in early 2010 . Polytron and Microsoft agreed to release Fez as an Xbox exclusive , a deal Fish later recalled as sensible . Fish designed the game as " a console game , not a PC game " , and felt that the way he intended the game to be experienced — with a controller on a <unk> — was " part of the medium " . Polytron ruled out a <unk> release due to problems Fish had with their platform and developer options . 
