Fez V: Wizard’s Betrayal (1987) is a course correction from the rocky fourth installment. I possibly think this works because it is an extended riff on Expedition to Barrier Peaks, one of my faves.

There is a lot of metaplot here, but I ignored it entirely in favor of just enjoying the dungeon crawl. In this installment in particular, Fez seems to be leaning into a kind of melodramatic tragic mode that I feel does not jibe well with the silliness of the actual action. He’s trapped in a crashed extraterrestrial machine that is about to commence to destructively terraforming the planet and you need to get in there, rescue him and stop the process.

Complicating things is the fact that the players are themselves visitors from another planet (mostly humans, one dwarf, one sentient silica pyramid with multiple eyes), the sole survivors of a spaceship crash. There are giant sparrows and weird centaur aliens and talking mice and mutant ants. It’s fine. The rules for blasters are OK. I appreciate that there is a stun setting.

There is no particular connection between this adventure and the, at that time, decade-old Boris Vallejo painting on the cover. As Boris paintings go, this isn’t even a particularly exciting one.