Planet of Lana is a very simple game, a classic indie adventure set in a world where humans live peacefully in harmony with nature. The peace is interrupted when sentient machines similar to arachnids begin to rain from the sky, devastating the village of Lana, our young protagonist, and capturing all humans for unknown reasons.

Playing as Lana, we’re going to figure out what happened to our people, and in the process, we will encounter a strange little creature called Mui. Planet of Lana’s experience is centered around the relationship between the child and the creature, much like the games made by Fumito Ueda (The Last Guardian, ICO).

Although the game does not shine for originality, it narrates a story in pleasant and captivating ways using only signs and sounds as a means of expression.

Teamwork makes the dream work

The gameplay of Planet of Lana is pretty simple. Move, run, jump, climb, lower and stay hidden when necessary. Mui’s ability to perform different actions through verbal orders is the distinguishing factor.

The game alternates moments of pure tension, in which you have to hide or escape from alien robots, with puzzles based on logic, observation, and the use of the environment and Mui’s abilities.

The relationship between Lana and Mui is crucial to overcome obstacles, demonstrating how much they need each other in order to continue.

As the story progresses, puzzles become increasingly complex, introducing new abilities, but never becoming frustrating. Indeed, if we really want to highlight a negative aspect of the game, is the repetitiveness of some environmental puzzles that are repeated several times in the same way, albeit in different environments.

Planet of Lana is like a Studio Ghibli movie

Artistically speaking, the game is so beautiful that it almost looks like a colorful movie animated by Studio Ghibli. Although there are only a few environments, they are all made with careful attention and great detail.

Music also plays a leading role, thanks to the soundtrack made by Takeshi Furukawa (composer of The Last Guardian) that accompanies us in many moments of strong emotional impact, especially during the final part. Technically speaking, the PC version is perfectly optimized and bug free.

The whole adventure is quite linear and short, and can be finished in about 6 hours if we spend some time exploring and searching for few collectibles related to the origins of Lana’s planet.

The replayability is therefore not high enough, but once the game is finished it’s possible to select the individual chapters from which to restart, in case we missed some collectibles.

Planet of Lana

PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series (2023)

Performance

Streamability

Audience Engagement

Replayability

Summary

Planet of Lana is a narrative adventure that is definitely worth playing. Its artistic value lies in the beautiful relationship between Lana and Mui, which is essential to solving puzzles and overcoming the most challenging obstacles.