Planet of Lana Review: The Power of Love (PS5)

Planet of Lana manages to do a lot with it’s simple premise. The 2.5D puzzle platformer weaves a tale of love between siblings. Siblings who are separated when an invading alien force descends from the heavens to claim this world as their own.

While solving this mystery, you will be ensorcelled by the majesty of the games soundtrack while travelling with Lana through a gorgeous looking world. The gameplay is a mixture of Inside & Abe’s Oddysee as you traverse beautiful locales and stealthily avoid the invaders. The puzzles became a tad hard for my brain before the end, but Planet of Lana’s story and structure pulled me through as I was always intrigued to see what came next.

Planet of Lana was developed by Wishfully Studios and published by Thunderful Publishing, coming out in May 2023 for Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Playstation 4 & 5.

Planet of Lana has plenty of tense moments but also loads of chill vibes. Alexis Shofner tells us about cozy games which came out in January.

Story: Mutual Dependency

Planet of Lana begins with Lana and her sister Elo living happily in their fishing village, being your normal teenagers. Visiting a familiar spot, reminiscing on old times, the sky comes alive with an asteroid. Then another. Soon their village, their world is turned upside down. Elo is taken from you right in front of your eyes. And through a combination of sheer terror, love and determination, you’re set on your path to find her & be reunited.

However, you’re not alone. Avoiding this alien force will be hard and you’re going to need help. Enter Mui, a baby cat like creature who’s unsure about their place in life. Helping it survive, Mui and Lana grow to develop a relationship and both of you go to rescue Elo.

The story is nicely told. As you go further into your journey, you come across different areas of your civilization that Lana has probably never encountered before. And through environmental storytelling, Planet of Lana was interesting when explaining what is happening and why our current situation has occurred. 

It’s other subtext shown throughout was its use of music. I’ll say more within sound and music, but it was fascinating to witness it’s importance to the Aliens, almost giving them a personality and it reminded me of the film Arrival.

The games length was a little long, but that’ll be based on how well you clear each puzzle. There was the odd action set piece. I enjoyed moving Lana through each stage and seeing a new area. I enjoyed the clash of technology within the natural environment.

The cutscenes with the incredible soundtrack were very cinematic.

Gameplay: Puzzle Orientated Punctuated With Cinematic Sections

Planet of Lana pits Lana & Mui against an invading alien horde. These monstrosities are generally mechanical in nature – spider robots being the main enemy. However, there were many variations on animals from their world, tainted by the aliens’ presence.

The gameplay starts simple and gradually got more involved. There was plenty of hiding in tall grass to avoid detection. Finding boxes which could be opened to reach higher ground. The world around us became infected, creating pressure pads which could create new ledges. There is a symbiosis with Mui. Like Abe’s Odyssey, as well as avoiding detection at all costs, you could order Mui around the area to do contextual button prompting, as they were more agile than you. Continuing the games story, the more actions Lana and Mui could do: controlling aliens to hacking terminals to control drones.

Lana’s slow movement took a little adjusting to. I had many a game over screen, but thankfully the checkpoints are instantaneous. Completing puzzles generally had that feeling that there is only ever one way to do it, which created frustration. It always felt good getting the hang of something, but it wasn’t always apparent. Overall the puzzle level is fair: there are a few tough ones nearer the end but most of the time they are inventive without destroying your brain.

Lana and Mui bond during the journey, needing each other to make it through

Planet of Lana’s gameplay is puzzle orientated but finding shrines off the beaten path was a nice aside. As was the quieter moments where it told it’s environmental storytelling – murals on walls depict what is going on. I liked them. I also had a good time with the more exciting sections when they appeared.

Planet of Lana occasionally was frustrating but overall, I enjoyed solving puzzles and really enjoyed figuring out how the story played out, with it broken into manageable chapters.

Graphics: Beautiful World

Planet of Lana stands out with the Unity engine. Lana herself looks a little plain but that’s to be expected. The art design for the alien forces was quite inventive even if there isn’t a lot of variety. The main takeaway is the world itself. It’s utterly gorgeous. The shadows and lighting stood out for me, against the pastel look.

The backgrounds especially looks spectacular – seeing the alien invasion as an individual person against the backdrop of massive ships towering over you is a sight to behold. The scope of the world itself is not lost on Wishfully Studios either. They did like to zoom out the camera, especially over horizons or cliff faces to show just how big the world is.

The areas Lana traverse are unique in their presentation; where the environment is king. There are areas with massive dinosaur skeletons, dense forests or the contrasting clean look of an alien ship. The detail put into foliage or the wooden shacks where you can see everything has an individuality to them – every leaf, every plank – was impressive.

The cutscenes were short but well directed, shown in 16:9, again going for a cinematic, movie feel. The UI was also clean, only noticeable when reminding you of where you left Mui.

The art direction looked incredible.

Music & Audio: Tour De Force

In Planet of Lana, It’s hard to express just how good Takeshi Furukawa’s score is without experiencing it yourself. The music is a cut above your normal soundtrack. It is beautiful to experience and elevates the whole journey. It is a combination of moving, upbeat pieces using woodwind and string instruments. And there are plenty of orchestral pounding pieces, full of dread and tension which were excellent. The Invasion piece especially. Here is the soundtrack on Spotify.

There is a main motif persistent throughout the story; through music, the actions of the alien army is expressed and is an interaction within gameplay. I really enjoyed how much the music was a cornerstone of the experience.

Sound is also excellent. The characters occasionally speak in a foreign tongue. The theme of communication is important to both us & the aliens. The aliens were mesmerising with their shrieks, beeps, squeaks. They had a main theme tune. Sound in game was also interesting, with plenty of background noise of birds and animals present, shelling from the invasion.  It was a very good experience.

Planet of Lana was played and reviewed on Playstation 5.