Same format as the Xbox version.
It's packed together in a big file, not encrypted but not trivial to intepret. It's not meant to be human readable, it's meant to be fast to decode by the game.

I've never seen a FEZ speed run! It doesn't feel like a very speedrunnable game, but probably any game can be... It certainly wasn't meant to be a time=score type of game, which is why we didn't put any timed leaderboard.
I'd be curious to watch one though :)

I'll look for a way to import the past formspring posts into a tumblr, that would be ideal. But yeah I'll set one up soon-ish. (May?)

I'll have to talk with him :)
It's a pretty bold claim and seems pessimistic. MonoGame is always evolving. What was MonoGame a year ago would've made it incredibly difficult to port FEZ, and now the 3D support is pretty much at feature parity with XNA 4.

I can't speak too much yet, though, as Windows is my main focus.

Nothing major content-wise. Actually, nothing content-wise.
The biggest feature in my mind is 1440p support. There's also a surprise feature in the game that I found myself adding just weeks ago.
And every use has 3 save slots now, Zelda-style. Man, we should've done this from the beginning, would've saved a lot of grief.

I'm still thinking about that Joust-style Move-controlled table tennis game with no visuals, just really good audio cues, and everyone wearing headphones that can reproduce good binaural surround sound. The idea of imagining where the ball is by hearing it is SO COOL to me.

(my first Nintendo console was the Wii so this list might seem a bit odd)

Games I remember fondly, off the top of my head : Doom, Dune 2, the Lunar series, FFVII and VIII, Final Fantasy Tactics, Coolboarders 2, King's Quest 6, countless Apogee shareware, Need for Speed 3 : Hot Pursuit, Screamer, Stunts, Street Rod, Shining Force 2, Diablo, Dungeon Keeper 2, Sim City 2000, Civilization, Armored Core... It's a wide timespan to cover.

I remember thinking about games as something I could create when I learned how to use WADED to make Doom maps from my brother. It's like you had a backstage pass into what makes the game a game. I wasn't a very good level designer, but it still puts you with a lot of control.
And much later seeing games like Unreal and Quake that started the "we can do real 3D now" era, it blew me away. I really wanted to make 3D games from that point. I became a bit obsessed with analyzing how everything in those engines is made, what all the settings did, how hardware acceleration worked and why it speeds up rendering like 10 times,... And then when programmable shaders came out, I knew I had to get into that. Graphics programming is fascinating.

I have used Lua, but it's as much of a scripting language as any other. Scripting is all about integration with your game engine, just using an interpreted language on the side doesn't get you far.
For FEZ I made my own "scripting" system, which didn't involve a language but was point-and-click. You could make it a language but the idea was to make it simple enough for Phil to use without risking syntax errors. You can learn more about it in my GDC presentation : http://theinstructionlimit.com/cubes-all-the-way-down-igs-gdc

I don't know of good tutorials on the subject though, sorry!

We have considered it and we'll probably do it in-house. Seeing as the current "main branch" of FEZ is using MonoGame and OpenGL, and MonoGame directly supports Mac using MonoMac, it shouldn't be a big problem. *knocks on wood*

Haven't tried it yet, but I will this weekend at the Global Game Jam. Should be interesting!

Have not in a long time. I have some old games on Wii VC, but again I don't really play them. Too many new good games come out.

*SPOILERS*

Have you read/translated what the hexahedron says?
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/961239-fez/62533951

The hexahedron expects you to be a ZU villager. He also mentions that the procedure of giving you the 3D power is not something trivial or risk-free, and that it might be messy.
Exactly why it explodes is anybody's guess though.

I bought the La-Mulana remake on PC, and played it for about 30 minutes, it didn't grab me and I didn't come back to it unfortunately... but I didn't give up! It's just a bit more obtuse than I expected. I need to spend time and/or read FAQs. And the jump controls... it's pretty hard to get used to the lack of inertia.

Cave Story, I finished on Wiiware. Great metroidvania. Unforgiving but so satisfying, and it's hard to not get caught in the characters and story.

And thanks/my pleasure!

He probably comes in once in a while. It's a public website, and a free country :)
If you mean whether he gets the question or answers them, no. It's my personal formspring.

I was involved in putting the strings in the game and making sure things fit, but the localization was done by Microsoft partners (or in-house Microsoft translators, not sure) from Dublin and Tokyo.
The fonts were chosen by the localization teams. I read the French translation a bit but didn't really work on it.

No idea! Not working on it.

I have no idea how much SMB sold on the first day.

I'm moving to C++ at work because that's what they use, but I'm not 100% enjoying it, and I still don't see myself using C++ for hobby projects, or future solo projects. Besides, even at work, the tendency is to only do low-level stuff in C++, and script the game mechanics in Lua, because it's so much more flexible and doesn't need compilation.

C++11 is definitely a good sign though, that the language wants to modernize.

Won't happen, sorry. Things happened, because FEZ attracts drama. But nothing's abandoned!

Don't we all, deep within our hearts?

I was the 1st, and at the time I left, the only employee. But Polytron has collaborators and friends, and I'm expandable as a capable programmer.