REVIEW: Step Into The Gorgeous ‘Planet Of Lana’ (XSX)

Planet of Lana is a gorgeous cinematic puzzle adventure with platforming from developer Wishfully and publisher Thunderful that asks: what if you took a game like Limbo or Inside and made it bright and colorful? The game, with a deep but subtle lore, takes the player across the beautiful planet on a rescue mission to save your sister and whole village from robots that invaded from the sky.

The plot is as simple as that even it presents itself as an epic sci-fi saga. You start in an idyllic and peaceful waterborne village visiting what you can surmise is your parents’ graves with your sister when she and everyone else is obducted by robots that come crashing out of the heavens. You take off after her and are summarily joined by a small monkey-like creature you call Mui who becomes your loyal friend after you rescue them and take on your journey. The game proceeds with puzzle platformer mechanics that require you and Mui to avoid the cold machines and wild unfamiliar creatures, to help each other traverse obstacles and gaps, and uncover some of the world’s secrets if your eyes are keen enough for it.

Over the course of the game, you acquire different abilities for Mui to take advantage of in this colorful world. Some puzzles will have you moving as one unit, while others will require you to have Mui pause where they are, interact with different switches or objects, and wait to follow you until the coast is clear, or vice versa. The asynchronous gameplay between the two characters works perfectly.

Every puzzle is clearly sectioned off from the next, and you always have a little bubble that indicates where Mui is and what actions they can perform from where they’re standing if they’re not on screen. This means you never have to question whether you’ve gone too far without each other or whether you have to backtrack to uncover the solution to a puzzle.

And each puzzle is pretty reasonable. Only twice did I have to pause and take some serious time to understand a solution to a puzzle by reading glyphs strewn about the walls. While I did not enjoy those specific puzzles for their substantially greater difficulty than everything else, the rest of Planet of Lana has players mostly using their environment and a small set of action commands to knock over boxes, swing on ropes, hide from enemies, and turn electronics on and off to move forward.

It’s a fairly short game, maybe 4 hours if you play straight through without attempting the no-deaths run. The game’s achievements prompt you to try or seek out the very well-hidden shrines that serve as the game’s only collectibles which work for the genre.

The shrines’ only substantial contributions are as pieces of additional lore, something the game is rife with underneath the hood but doesn’t imply that you should master or even necessarily fully understand. The ongoing drama of Lana and Mui’s quest and their constant peril is enough to keep you going in the motivation department, especially with a couple of dramatic turns the plot takes. There’s never too long without some kind of (usually) brief cinematic interlude to keep tabs on your character’s emotional state through unintelligible language and body language.

The visuals are accordingly gorgeous. Every drop of its hand-painted atmosphere is luscious and vibrant, with drastically different color palates throughout the game’s several environments and a simple but effective character design. During the opening and closing segments, I felt like the characters got a bit blurry while they moved and could have used slightly thicker outlines because their details are so sparse. But once out in the world and devoid of other humans, I instantly stopped noticing. Instead, I was just enraptured by the soft soundtrack and pretty sights. It’s one of the most visually stunning games of the year so far.

Step into Planet of Lana and have a beautiful, low-stress time. Its puzzles are enough to get you thinking but simple enough to keep the game relaxing and perfectly paced.

Planet of Lana is available now on Xbox and PC, including with our Game Pass affiliate link.