Planet of Lana Review

You know games like Inside, Limbo, which do not tell the player anything in writing or audibly, but tell everything with what they show throughout the game. Planet of Lana, one of the most ambitious indie games of this year and developed by Wishfully Studios, was released in the past months. The most prominent feature of the science fiction, puzzle-platform game is its art design. Let’s be one of the new ones of this genre Planet of LanaLet’s look together.

Planet of Lana Review: How does our adventure begin?

In this game where we direct the character named Lana, we start in a very sweet fishing town. We are running around the town with our sister named Elo and we come to a hillside outside the town. Not only do we reach the slope, we see huge machines falling to the ground as if it were raining. One of the machines comes to the hillside and kidnaps our brother Elo and this is how our adventure begins.

Planet of Lana Review

Hide and wait for the right moment

Planet of Lana is a production that starts with platform game mechanics but offers us unique mechanics as it progresses. We use one of these mechanics with a little friend who helps us. This little friend, whose name is Mui, helps us a lot in overcoming obstacles, escaping from enemies and solving puzzles throughout the game.

In our puzzle-oriented journey, we also encounter enemies trying to catch us. The way to get rid of these enemies is to hide and wait for the right sequence and move forward. Sometimes waiting for the right sequence is not enough. In these situations, Mui comes to our aid and distracts the enemies for us.

Planet of Lana Review

I can say I had a hard time controlling Mui in a few places. In one episode, while using Mui to distract myself, I had to bring it with me. When I called and asked him to stop, he was caught by the enemy every time because the commands were delayed. Later, by giving these commands earlier, I enabled Mui to get over the enemy. Of course, this did not bother me too much, but it may be a situation that may disturb other players.

If Lana or Mui is caught by the enemy, you start again from the checkpoint where the game automatically saves. Except for a few points, the checkpoints are generally well placed.

Planet of Lana Review

Puzzles and Lana

I can say that the puzzles in the game are mostly simple to solve and gradually solved. Let me explain what I mean by gradual: Let’s imagine that there is a door in front of us, in order to reach the door, we first need to find an object on which we can climb.

Then we have to climb on that object and press the button that will open the door so that the door opens. Although the general structure is this and similar puzzles, there are also three more challenging puzzles that require the player to think. I like the way the game is designed because if it were all easy it would be less fun. On the contrary, if most puzzles were difficult, the game would get boring more quickly.

Planet of Lana Review

Fascinating Design

Planet of Lana has done a great job visually. Whether it’s character designs or venue designs, it fascinates you at every moment of the game. As I mentioned above, the game starts in a sweet fishing town, but then we continue our journey through dark caves, dangerous and scary swamps, lush forests, and endless deserts. Horizon Forbidden West, one of the big-budget games, is my favorite in terms of art design, while Planet of Lana has been my favorite in recent years on the independent side.

Sound designs as well as the visual design of the game have been great. While we are walking through the forest, we can hear the sounds of insects and birds, and when we go to a coastal area, we can hear the sound of the sea waves hitting the beach. The character voices are also sweet. Our character’s melodic interaction with his environment reflects the emotions he experienced at that moment to the player in a wonderful way. In fact, one of the most important features of the game was this melodic voiceover. If you’re thinking of playing the game, let’s not talk more about this in order not to give spoilers.

Planet of Lana Review

Run Run Jump

Looking at the gameplay, I can say that the keyboard controls are quite comfortable. In the process of finishing the game, I had almost no control problems. Animations such as climbing, running, jumping are also very fluid and playable. If you’ve played productions like Limbo and Inside, I’m sure you’ll get used to it very quickly. Optimization and bug problems, which are the problems of today’s games, are not a problem in Planet of Lana.

Conclusion

Planet of Lana was a production that I liked very much both visually and in terms of gameplay. I found the simplicity and fluency of the storytelling successful. On top of that, it took close to five hours and I think it was an ideal gameplay time for the genre. It was a very good experience as we gradually bonded with the character named Mui and overcome the obstacles on our way with him.

Planet of Lana Review

If you like puzzle-platform games or if you have experienced and loved games like Limbo and Inside before, I definitely recommend you to give Planet of Lana a chance. Also, if you’re still interested in the genre, you can check out our Little Nightmares 2 review content.

Planet of Lana, which is priced at $20; Available only on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Epic Games and Steam platforms. Let’s also remind you that it was added to the Gamepass library on the day it was released.