Developer Wishfully together with Thunderful Publishing have created a game that’s worthy of immense praise. Planet of Lana, self-described as an “epic sci-fi saga”, truly is a great game with an art style that immediately draws you in and captivates you from start to finish.
Is Planet of Lana worth checking out? And does it live up to its hype and claims of being a cinematic puzzle adventure game?
Lana
Kicking off the adventure, players will take on the role of Lana, a young girl living in a primitive coastal settlement. You’ll start off the game by chasing your sister across your village while the game brings you up to speed with the basic control scheme. You’ll learn how to run, jump, crawl and most importantly, sneak and it’s all done through visual storytelling.
Once you’re through this introductory sequence, things go awry as an arachnoid space robot force descends upon the planet and abducts pretty much everything and everyone. Lana manages to escape being caught and finds a cat creature which she saves and names “Mui”. Together with Mui, Lana sets off on an epic adventure while learning more about the machines and her own world in the process.
Being a puzzle platformer at its core, Planet of Lana involves players moving Lana across the 2D environments in order to progress. The puzzles in the game are quite varied and Lana will have to rely on Mui’s abilities as well as her own to solve them. These puzzles can range from really simple to quite complex involving water, robots, boxes, wildlife and more. For the most part, the puzzles are quite easily solvable and have the right level of difficulty expected from a game of this nature.
The challenge in Planet of Lana lies in the fact that in certain segments of the game, you will need to be stealthy and avoid detection. Some puzzles also require a bit of creative thinking to solve and when you do get past them, it feels quite satisfying. Observing enemy movements and responding accordingly is necessary for survival.
For some strange reason though, the developers have opted to include QTEs or “Quick Time Events” in the game. Thankfully, the option to disable these is available in the options menu and this alleviates a lot of frustration caused by them in the game.
Planet of Lana doesn’t feature standard voice acting but instead has voiced sounds and vocalisations. These perform their function well. The soundtrack of the game in combination with the visuals works perfectly in evoking emotion at the right times in the game.
Visually appealing
Speaking of visuals, Planet of Lana is truly a work of art. Every single scene in the game is worthy of being screenshot and the more cinematic cutscenes are gorgeous. The game heavily relies on visual storytelling and the developers have done an excellent job with them from start to finish. The vibrant colours and artistic flair given to the natural areas of the game contrast greatly with the cold, dark and ominous robot ones.
Planet of Lana’s slight downfall lies in the fact that while the game doesn’t overstay its welcome, it still falls into a cookie-cutter genre where it isn’t innovating much or bringing more to the table apart from its stellar visuals. It certainly seems to have been inspired by great 2D titles of old as well as more modern titles such as Limbo or Inside but it struggles to truly stand-out gameplay-wise. It follows a tried and trusted formula that has been carried by its gorgeous visuals and cinematic storytelling and the pacing can be a bit slow because of this.
Final Verdict
With all of the above said Planet of Lana is still an enjoyable game. Yes, it might be a tad formulaic and hard to differentiate from the myriad of other 2D adventure puzzle platformers out there, however, it doesn’t need to be wildly different to be successful. The game is worth playing through for the visual storytelling alone and gets a recommendation from me.
Planet of Lana Launch Trailer
Grab Planet of Lana here https://planetoflana.com/
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