Fish describes the game's changes during development as "organic"—they tested different kinds of levels and replicated the types of in-game exploration that the team appreciated most. It came to adopt Metroidvania mechanics, with "secret passages, warp gates, and cheat codes". Fish cited "Myst" as another touchstone and compared its open world, nonlinear narrative, and "obtuse metapuzzles" to "Fez" own alphabet, numeric system, and an "almost unfairly hard to get" "second set of collectibles". Fish originally fought against having an in-game map because he wanted players to draft their own. After attempting to do so himself, he changed his mind. Fish later called the in-game map "probably one of the weakest aspects of the game". Fish also fought against including the navigational assistant, Dot, but later felt that the addition was successful and a positive contribution to the game's mythology. The fez itself, Fish described as an "ancient symbol of understanding the third dimension". "Fez" had three different animators through its development: Paul Robertson of "", who did the game's animals and some of Gomez's animations, Adam Saltsman of "Canabalt", and Graham Lackey, who did some character animations. The game's mechanics were inspired by the Nintendo Entertainment System games Fish played in his youth, particularly "Super Mario" and "The Legend of Zelda". Fish cited Fumito Ueda's "Ico" as the game's third inspiration, and he sought to emulate its feeling of nostalgic and isolated loneliness. Fish also sought to emulate Ueda's "design by subtraction" philosophy, where the "Ico" development team would periodically remove parts of the game so as to leave only what was essential to their vision. In this way, ideas like player health and object weight puzzles were gradually struck from "Fez". Fish made a personal challenge of designing a game without relying on "established mechanics". As such, "Fez" was always a peaceful game and there was never an enemy coded into the game. So as to better emulate Hayao Miyazaki's signature "open blue sky", "feel-good" atmosphere, Fish watched all of the director's films one weekend early in the development cycle.