Planet of Lana (Reveiw)

Start writing.Planet of Lana is a cinematic puzzle adventure with hand painted graphics. It is the debut title of Wishfully, a Swedish indie studio founded in 2018.

The game was inspired by a single image created by the game’s director back in 2017: a girl gazing at a large robot creature, which ultimately became the game’s cover art. Drawing inspiration from other platformers like Limbo and Inside, and films from Studio Ghibli, the seed for the game was planted and development started in 2018.

Since then the game’s release has been delayed a few times, partly because of negative feedback from the publishers with regards to the game’s initial 2D art style, which lead them to change it to a more dynamic 2.5D style.

Let’s take a closer look at this game that started with a single picture.


Abducted by robots
The story starts on a peaceful day in a village. Lana and her sister play together, racing each other to the mountain cliff to gaze at the beautiful sky. So far, the day has been like just any other day before.

But fate takes a turn, as a loud deafening noise disturbs the quietness and meteor-like objects star crashing down from the sky. They turn out to be robot-like creatures that are very reminiscent of the alien robots from War of the Worlds, and seem to have the sole intention of causing chaos, panic and havoc all over the place. Not long after they land, they start kidnapping the people, including Lana’s sister.

Lana escapes the village and is determined to find out what happened and save her sibling, wherever she is. After a while she meets Mui, a small cute creature that tags a long with her and turns out to be of incredible help. As the story unfolds, they create an unbreakable friendship, all while the true meaning of what happened is unraveled and all the pieces are put together.


Platforming and puzzle solving are key
Planet of Lana mostly plays as a platformer, where you have to consider both the timing and momentum of your movement and jumps. Although it sounds simple enough, there are quite a bit of challenges for developers to get this right and make sure that you have full control over your character while being able to predict the trajectory of, let’s say, a well timed jump. While some sections are a bit tricky, in general Wishfully has done a good job in its implementation. To help out with the platforming, especially at the start of your adventure, visual indicators like the yellow color on the ledges will indicate where you can climb on to. This kind of visual queue has been used many times already in other games (Horizon Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, The Last of Us, for example) and is certainly of big help if you need help in the early minutes of the game.

While Planet of Lana emphasizes the journey more than anything else, Lana does need to solve puzzles in tandem with Mui in order to progress, which usually involves moving objects onto the right location or performing actions in a certain order, such as activate levers or luring enemies, so that both Lana and Mui are able to proceed in a safe fashion. The puzzles are well balanced and clever and become a bit larger in scope as you progress, but do get repetitive as they usually come down to the same: climb onto ropes, avoid the sight of patrolling machines by crouching in tall grass or hiding behind an object or structure, push around objects and pull levers.


Beautiful visuals and sounds
It’s obvious from the get-go that Planet of Lana’s hand painted graphics are signature to the game: the gorgeous environments come to life thanks to the parallax scrolling of multiple background layers. There are several moments where you just want to stop moving and appreciate the beautiful backdrop of Lana’s adventure.

The first half of the game mostly treats you with beautiful vistas of natural environments and, as the story progresses, you are introduced to different biomes that look more mechanical but still wonderfully fit in the game’s overall art style.

The music of the game is as wonderful as the graphics; Takeshi Furukawa, known as the music composer of The Last Guardian and Mythic Quest, has created an orchestral soundtrack that fits perfectly with the sci-fi atmosphere of the game and lifts the experience to a whole new level.

However, good sound design is more than providing a perfect score; it’s also knowing when to tone down, so to speak. And this where the influence of Furukawa really shines. There are scenes where there’s no music at all, which allows the graphics and sound design to fully take the stage. It’s those times where there game makes you reflect on certain things, maybe even on things outside the universe of the game.

Being a big fan of movie soundtracks myself, in particular the music of composers like James Horner and John Williams, I can most definitely appreciate Planet of Lana’s colorful orchestral score as it clearly drew inspiration from some of Hollywood’s greatest composers.


Verdict
Planet of Lana’s full playthrough clocks off between three and four hours, depending on whether or not you want to obtain all achievements. It’s not that long, and it’s because of this that the lack of variety in gameplay becomes apparent. Despite that, Planet of Lana is a very beautiful and enjoyable game and while it certainly doesn’t redefine its genre, it does again prove that a small indie studio can achieve wonderful things with the right team of people: the art direction and soundtrack are simply gorgeous and are for me reason enough to recommend picking up this gem.