Planet of Lana: Beautiful, but Lacking Innovation

Planet of Lana is a visually stunning sci-fi puzzler that while emotionally engaging, fails to innovate in gameplay.

Planet of Lana Review (Xbox Series X)

Release Date: May 23, 2023

Publisher: Thunderful Publishing

Developer: Wishfully Studios

Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows (Switch, PS4, PS5 in Spring 2024)

Rating: 8/10

*SOME PLOT SPOILERS BELOW*

Planet of Lana was a relatively quiet release back in May 2023, coming in the same time frame as much bigger titles like Minecraft Legends, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, and Dead Island 2. While straying from the action-oriented formula of those games, Wishful Studios’ contemporary sci-fi puzzle-platformer was a surprising play, one that aside from being artistically stunning, was equal parts mesmerizing and emotional, even if it lacked in the gameplay area.

Planet of Lana follows a young girl, Lana, who resides in a small village on a foreign planet. One day, ships arrive and drop robots, which begin to destroy the landscapes she’s come to know and kidnaps everyone, including her beloved sister, Olai. In a desperate attempt to find her sister, Lana ventures on a cross-continental journey, encountering unique creatures, murderous robots, and finding a new companion, a little space cat named Mui. 

The gameplay features extremely limited dialogue, where the only decipherable words are the names of the characters we encounter. What dialogue remains, adequately captures the emotions of Lana and her companions. I quite enjoyed this choice as the lack of dialogue really helped elevate all the other artistic elements the game offers (I’m listening to the soundtrack as I write this).

While I loved the art style, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It is extremely simplistic, and it works to the game’s favor as this side-scroller doesn’t zoom into characters very often through the 5-6 hours of gameplay Planet of Lana offers. Every environment is put together as a wonderfully layered playground, shifting between forests, water, deserts, and underground environments that resemble paintings more than backgrounds throughout this game’s 13 chapters.

When the story demands it, the limited voices deliver, getting across Lana’s emotions effectively enough that I found myself tearing up more than once. However, the music is what takes front and center, with a score composed and orchestrated by Takeshi Furukawa (Star Wars: Clone Wars, The Last Guardian). Furukawa’s score is hypnotizing from start to finish and performed by a live orchestra (I know, I was pretty surprised by that, too)! I honestly can’t remember the last time I encountered such a phenomenal score. Maybe last year’s Hi-FI Rush?

As a story, Planet of Lana offers up a lot. Lana is part of a human settlement on this foreign planet, whom we learn came here originally on a resettlement plan. Through trials and tribulations, the humans settled, and the remnants of Earth’s culture disappeared with technology and modernity as humanity defaulted back to a very simplistic, almost hunter-gatherer type society. The arrival of the robots, our antagonists, create a complex story, that while fairly linear, can be interpreted whichever way you’d like by the last 4 chapters. The way our antagonists act also carry a lot of settler symbolism with the way they capture and displace the people and animals of the planet, alongside underlying themes of environmental exploitation and ecological degradation. The art and music elevate these influences beautifully, especially in the moments where things get dark and creepy. 

But onto the gameplay! If you play a lot of puzzlers like I do, then you’ll find that the gameplay is where Planet of Lana unfortunately falters. The puzzles are on par with many others in the genre and as a result, this game fails to deliver anything new for mechanics. You’d think with such a masterfully designed world, you’d think the gameplay would be on par, right?

The difficulty of the puzzles stays consistent throughout the majority of the game. Generally, this is an opportunity to up the difficulty, especially with the tension this story builds, but instead, Planet of Lana just adds more puzzles with more pieces as opposed to being cleverer. For example, you’ll have a puzzle where you move a box across a small space, get replicated later by having to duck, dive, and magnetize across a space three times larger for the same objective. On a controller, I did find some of these puzzles to be challenging. For instance, there is a puzzle where you use a robot sentry with Mui to float through some electrified passages and the drift on the joystick had me working on this puzzle for 30 minutes. 

Outside of the puzzles, the controls are extremely easy to grasp and handle, with some instances in the story defaulting to a button mash to progress, something I actually was hoping Planet of Lana wouldn’t do. Instead of just adding more steps to puzzles, the game abandons that for what feels like a haphazard switch to button smashing missions, that honestly could’ve engaged players in a more entertaining way.

All in all, Planet of Lana is a visually stunning puzzler that delivers an equally beautiful story and score. If there’s anything players take away from this game, it is how breathtaking it is when it comes to art, music, and story. Unfortunately, it fails to innovate where it truly matters - gameplay - but I imagine for those unaccustomed to puzzle games, this will be a fantastic gateway into the genre. 

Planet of Lana is currently available on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows on Game Pass or to purchase for $19.99. It will be available on the PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch in Spring 2024. 

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