Quick Review: Plazma Being

This guy’s on fire.

Wheeeee! Hey, if I'm stuck here,
I might as well try to enjoy it.

Made by Felix Wunderlinch and released on February 9th, 2015, Plazma Being follows the story of Zeb, a little fiery creature from space (also known as a Plazma Being) kidnapped by aliens. Taken to their planet. Then the planet basically shatters due to earthquakes. Let’s just say poor Zeb has had better days. Thankfully, the teleporters are still working, so he can make his way around this world after escaping.

This is yet another classic puzzle platformer as we see so often on Steam. It even has similar mechanics to others, although it likes to combine mechanics to make pretty cool puzzles. Things start out simple, then get complex as each new puzzle requires you to remember everything lil’ Zeb can do. Zeb starts out with two forms: His regular orange form, which can “walk” around and jump and do all the platforming things, and a blue form that allows him to grab items and move them in a perimeter around him.

I can defy gravity itself by trapping stuff in midair!

Aaaaah! Lasers bad!

There’s a catch, though; in the blue form, Zeb can NOT move at all. He’s a sitting duck until he’s done with the puzzle-solving. That said, it’s a form that can do a lot, as it can also spin items on themselves or lock them in one place (useful to create platforms over pits, as an example). Another caveat is that he can’t un-lock things locked into position, so you’d better make sure you stick every block exactly where you want it to be.

Past Level 4, Zeb gains a new purple form that lets him possess objects. He can’t move them while inhabiting them, however, so a handful of puzzles involve giving those items some momentum before he inserts himself into them. Like I said: Every ability you learn comes in handy multiple times, so you need to remember everything the Plazma Being can do. Because, trust me on that, the puzzles get tricky fast.

A-ha! Laser back to sender!

Speaking of Level 4, it has the first boss battle, set against a flying robot that shoots lasers with utmost precision at Zeb. How do you defeat it? Grab a cube and carefully drag it around to redirect the lasers back to sender. It’s tough, because the cube is very small and you need to spin it around a bit to aim. That part alone gives a pretty good idea of the level of difficulty here. It's tough! (It also crashed on me right before the boss at the end of Level 7, which was already difficult and took me a while to get through.)

I just sent myself barrelling across a large chasm
using my new powers and momentum. I'm good!

But with all that said, I do like the ideas here. The game solely introduces each aspect and then sets up a puzzle to let you experiment with it – though I think it would have earned to explain some concepts better, as I got stuck from time to time because the new mechanic wasn’t explained well enough, forcing me to resort to tutorials. It’s more noticeable in later levels, where puzzles have a lot of moving parts. The game is also fairly short, only 10 levels, but with how tricky they are, you’ll need a couple hours. It’s a pretty fine game overall, I can say I recommend it. Can’t say I’d play it again once I’m done, but yeah, it’s a decent short experience.

Plazma Being is available for 4.99$ USD.