Fez: 2D platforming, 3D world. Serene, beautiful, mind-bending.

Fez has had its share of controversy. The game was vaporware for a long time, and had all sorts of internal tribulations associated with it. It was one of the games chronicled in Indie Game: The Movie (http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/), and Phil Fish is.... a personality. In that perfectionist, tortured artist vein. But the end result is spectacular. There's lots of standard platforming, and some Metroidvania-style exploration and world growth. But get past the basic challenges and you're dealing with spatial relationships, astronomy, parsing and translating an entire fictional language, real-world interactions, and other surprising challenges. And it's relaxing. No high-tension action or rawr-rawr shoot-em-up bravado, just a (mostly) serene world to exist in. Plus, Disasterpeace's soundtrack is amazing.