I’ll admit that I decided to demo REZ PLZ for two reasons – the title and the art. The former is a casualty of being an English major, I get drawn in easily by quirky wordplay, and had to know what REZ PLZ meant. I quickly learned it stood for “resurrection please”, which only made me fonder of the game. As for the art, it’s very colorful and detailed pixel art, and that sort of thing always draws me like a moth to flame. But you’re probably not reading this piece to understand my motivations, you probably want to know how REZ PLZ plays. I’ll get to that shortly, but first humor me as I spend a little time talking about the game and its developers.
REZ PLZ is developed by Long Neck Games and set to be published by Graffiti Games. Though I’m familiar with the latter, I hadn’t heard of Long Neck Games before. Turns out, they’re a team of brothers, which is kind of funny given the premise of the game. You play a couple of brothers, Arcan and Zeph, two pretty untalented wizards in training. The have pretty incompetent skills, and have only mastered one scroll, a simple yet effective resurrection spell. That skill is the cornerstone of the entire game, since often you’ll have to sacrifice one brother to progress. But worry not, a quick resurrection and you’re off to the races again!
If that sounds delightfully twisted, then you probably have siblings of your own. As a single child, I probably missed some of the nuance of brotherly bonds, but as someone with a dark sense of humor, I really enjoyed this premise. What’s great about REZ PLZ is that it’s a platformer with puzzle elements, and not the other way around. I’m usually horrible at complex puzzle games, but I excel at platforming. You can tell the brother who programmed the game knows his way around the platformer genre, since it feels tight and satisfying. I never died cause of bad controls, always cause of my own impatience or incompetence. I found the gameplay worked very, very well, and I was eager to play as much as possible. I got to actually play the demo with the other brother, also a Joshua, and he’s the mind behind the art direction. I truly was impressed by that as well. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that without the art direction luring me in, there’s a chance I might not have demoed REZ PLZ, which would have been a mistake on my part. But best of all, the game is playable either single player or local co-op.
As you progress through the game, you will learn new spells to help you get around, but the concept of murdering one brother to progress will be a recurring one. I was very pleasantly surprised by REZ PLZ, and am looking forward to the final build. It’s slated to release on Steam, Xbox and Nintendo Switch next year, and I personally cannot wait. To get an even better impression of the style of the game, just check out this trailer.
