Arguably this year’s most anticipated indie title, and last year’s…and the year before, Polytron has confirmed that their puzzle platformer, Fez, has reached the 100,000 sales mark on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Interestingly, the announcement over on Facebook celebrates hitting the 100,000 mark but actually says that Fez has sold “more than”, so technically that could mean ANY number over. We’re just going to presume that it’s close to the landmark though. Unsurprisingly, most of the comments in that thread are people asking to see the game on other platforms. People, if that does happen, it’s not going to be for a while yet.

The first patch for Fez should be out soon too. When the game launched it was met with high praise but there were certainly a number of issues; mainly bugs, glitches and framerate lag oddly enough. Polytron have since gathered up all the feedback from players that they can and worked it into this patch, so hopefully everything should be ironed out.

Fez, if you’re unfamiliar, is a sidescrolling puzzle platformer which features Gomez in his pursuit to rectify his 2D world by travelling through a new dimension. The result is a 3D world in which you travel along 2D planes, and with a lovely visual aesthetic, clever puzzles and a beautiful soundtrack from Disasterpeace, Fez has been getting quite a lot of love.

More information on Fez can be found on the game’s official website.

Hi I’m from the press so I enjoy making up rivalries where they don’t exist! You’re welcome. This time we have two horses going at each other, biting at hooves and whipping with tails – FortressCraft and Total Miner. FortressCraft made the first move when the developer announced that the sandbox crafter reached 750,000 sales with this tweet.

Not to be outdone, the developer of Total Miner – also known as the game which recently became the top seller on XBLIG – came out with this tweet announcing that the game had hit 800,000 sales. In your face FortressCraft! Or something.

Of course, both of these games are heavily inspired by Mojang’s Minecraft and any attempt to deny that fact is futile, but they have their own unique features and are quality games – clearly, the figures show that. However, it will be interesting to see how well they can hold a community when the grand stallion of the sandbox crafter, Minecraft obviously, lands on XBLA on May 9th. Their much cheaper price points will not doubt give them a fighting chance of course and it’s not like they haven’t already sold loads already – still, will the communities switch over? We’ll see, oh, we’ll see.

So, who’s starting the bettings on who will sell a million copies first? Minecraft, FortressCraft or Total Miner? We know who our money is on.

You can find out more information about Total Miner on its official website, and about FortressCraft on its official website.

What is probably quite a non-surprise to the majority of people, Almost Human have said that after the launch week of their dungeon crawler, Legend of Grimrock, their development costs have been more than covered and that they’ll be rolling out the first patch soon.

Well this surprised us about as much as an ogre to the face. Oh wait, that actually would be quite surprising. Well anyway, Legend of Grimrock‘s launch week went rather well it would seem, being pre-order ready on GOG.com and #1 seller on Steam for a while too. The good news from Almost Human as they wrote in their blog is that “the development costs of the game have now been covered many times over so the future of the company seems pretty secure.” So expect more titles down the line from those wonderful people!

Of course, the inevitable first patch is on its way soon now that the thousands have graced the dungeons of Mount Grimrock and saw something out of place causing them to shout “Oi, fix this!” It’s nothing much and certainly nothing unusual for a first patch – you can watch the first post of this thread for progress on the patch.

If you haven’t already, make sure to read our review of Legend of Grimrock and more importantly, go and play it! Since the game’s launch, we have learned one valuable lesson and that is that spiders are really horrible. The quick, scuttling, venomous buggers!

More information on Legend of Grimrock is available on the game’s official website.

Jenova Chen has announced that Journey is the fastest selling PSN game ever in both SCEA and SCEE regions; a huge triumph for thatgamecompany.

We knew it was big and we all knew that it’s fallen into the hearts of many, but did we really expect Journey to become the fastest selling PSN game ever? No, but we’re not surprised and we honestly can’t think of a better game to hold that title, find out why in our review. Journey is thatgamecompany’s third and final contractual title for PSN, havine delivered flOw and Flower before it, both great games in their own rights – but Journey really blows any previous achievement out of the water for the small studio.

Writing on the PlayStation blog, co-found of thatgamecompany, Jenova Chen, made the incredible announcement:

“Thanks to you all, Journey has officially broken PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store sales records, surpassing all games ever released on the PlayStation Network to become the fastest-selling game ever released on PlayStation Store, in both the SCEA and SCEE regions.”

Chen continues to describe how the many fan letters they received after their previous titles were released, all thankful and many of them very touching, is what help spurs thatgamecompany on to explore new meaning in the medium. The fan mail after the release of Journey is staggering though, Chen claims they have received more fan letters in the first two weeks of Journey‘s release than the entire three years of Flower’s.

As a thank you, Chen presented a piece of art from the studio to those who have supported them.

More good news comes for the fans as Chen also announced that the much requested for official soundtrack of Journey will be released on the PS Store and iTunes on April 11th, with a limited CD release coming sometime in the near future as well.

More information on Journey can be found on the developer’s official website.

UPDATE: Squid In A Box added a very good point to this news – the Steam Winter Sale was held throughout December meaning that the Steam sales figures are more than likely very skewed and not a typical representation.

During a Atom Zombie Smasher post-mortem, Blendo Games revealed its sales figures for Atom Zombie Smasher during December 2011 and while the chart is not entirely surprising, it does go to prove a few things.

We’re all aware that the Valve’s PC digital distribution store front Steam has some incredible selling power, in fact the general consensus is that if you get your game on Steam then you have hit the big time. With the secrecy of sales figures that Valve insists though, no one quite knew just how much of a difference Steam can make, unless of course you have a game on there already.

As you can see in the pie chart above presented by Blendo, Steam is very dominant. Here’s the actual figures:

Atom Zombie Smasher sales through December 2011

• Steam: 96,000
• BMT Micro (direct sales): 1,800
• GamersGate: 155
• Direct2Drive: 87
• Impulse: 85
• Ubuntu Store: 48
• Desura*: 24

*shorter sales period.

Unsurprisingly, it seems that the consensus is true, but 96% is a huge margin. It’s brilliant to see what Steam is doing for indie developers but it’s also a concern that so much is riding on striking it lucky and getting on Steam. 96%! That really is quite a baffling figure.

Via IGN

Those wonderful fellows over at Swing Swing Submarine have shared the 2011 sales charts of their game Blocks That Matter, the results are rather interesting to say the least.Blocks That Matter was released on to the Xbox Live Marketplace on May 5th 2011 and made its way to PC (Steam, Desura, Indievania) later in August. It also won the Dream.Build.Play 2011 Challenge and the game has been part of the Humble Voxatron Debut in November. It’s a puzzle game with a decent learning curve, some reflexive humor and a quirky art style. That’s the basics of the game, so let’s have a look at how it fared in the market!You’ll see in the charts below that Blocks That Matter sold a very, very small percentage on Xbox Live, not like that’s entirely surprising – we’ve heard similar stories before.The third chart down reveals which platforms the game sold the most on. Unsurprisingly, Steam came out on top but contrary to what many might think, Blocks That Matter sold more on Indievania than it did Desura.

Original Source: Stats That Matter: Swing Swing Submarine Shares Sales Charts

This Article was originally posted on our sister site, The Indie Game Magazine written by Chris Priestman.