Planet Of Lana review – inside the limbo of 2023’s prettiest game

Planet Of Lana – did we mention how pretty it is? (pic: Thunderful)

A new indie game that pays homage to classics such as Limbo and Inside also has some of the best graphics of the year.

The first thing you notice about Planet Of Lana is the colours; the wonderfully bright, natural looking colours. Many are happy to mock the brown monochrome of the Xbox 360 era, but even today most mainstream video games have all the colour and exuberance of a surly teenager’s bedroom. For some reason video games equate realism with a colour palette that is 50 shades of grey, as if you’re viewing the world through a perpetually dirty pair of glasses.

Planet Of Lana does have some dark and gloomy sections, and some purposefully grey and clinical ones, but they’re used sparingly and to portray specific moods. They also act as a counter to the glorious exterior scenes, which are a bucolic sugar rush of unspoilt greenery and gently swaying flora. Or at least they are until the giant robot spiders arrive.

The first game by new Swedish studio Wishfully, Planet Of Lana is a 2D, side-scrolling platform puzzler reminiscent of Playdead’s Limbo and Inside. The popularity of those games has seen many an imitator over the years but while they are obviously a major inspiration for Planet Of Lana it does not copy either of them particularly closely. Its visuals are entirely its own but while the graphics are beyond reproach the gameplay is another issue entirely…

The planet in question here is not Earth, unless we’ve suddenly gained a couple more moons since the last time we checked, but since all the spoken dialogue is in an alien language it’s a little difficult to tell exactly what’s going on. You do pick up clues, literally, as you go, regarding the origins of the civilisation Lana is a part of, but none of that is pertinent to what’s going on, as her village is attacked by invading robots and her brother (or possibly sister or maybe lover, we think you’re meant to imprint your own interpretation) is kidnapped.

Lana is just an ordinary teenage girl and her society is very low tech, with no sign of any weapons, so she can’t fight the robots in any way. Nevertheless, she chases after her boyfriend, from left to right across the screen, visiting seemingly every biome on the planet, from the lush green opening area to murky swamps and scorching hot deserts.

Although you can sometimes backtrack a little, if you feel you’ve missed one of the shrines with clues to the planet’s history, that’s never actively encouraged and instead the game splits itself up into small sections that are just a couple of screens wide, where you have to platform and puzzle your way out, often accompanied by a bit of light stealth action.

Lana can’t run very fast, or jump very far, but early on she finds an alien creature in a cage and befriends it. This strange mixture of cat and monkey is much more limber, and Lana quickly learns to instruct it to move to particular locations and operate simple switches or chew through wires.

The cat-monkey also has the strange ability to hypnotise creatures (we didn’t fully understand this bit, but it has something to do with a special device Lana finds) and move them backwards and forwards to do things like activate switches and block solar panels.

The mechanics are simple but flexible and at first this seems like it’s going to be more than a match for Playdead’s classics. However, the puzzles are less physics based than those games and you quickly begin to recognise different puzzle pieces being reused in different situations.

Planet Of Lana – this section is a real highlight (pic: Thunderful)

Hypnotising a creature to change water levels, getting animals to stand on tendrils to activate an organic tentacle platform, and using your cat-monkey to drop down ropes is fun the first couple of times but while there is a steady drip of new ideas the game never evolves in either complex or ingenuity.

The biggest problem is not necessarily the repetition but how easy everything is. Not insultingly so, but there’s no puzzle that had us pause for thought for more than a minute or so. Worse, there are plenty that took much longer than that to complete, long after we’d figured out what we were supposed to be doing.

Despite the excellent graphics and charming tone, Planet Of Lana is ultimately just a bit dull. Once you get the hang of the core puzzles your hope of encountering anything challenging or unexpected slowly begins to melt away. The nadir is a giant spider-like monster that looks like it’s going to be an exciting boss encounter but actually turns out to be one of the easiest and most obvious puzzles in the entire game.

The story is equally disappointing, with the ending offering no real surprises, just a cheap bit of emotional manipulation.

Planet Of Lana may look like a highbrow indie game but the storytelling and puzzle design are so undercooked that the only area where it really excels is the presentation. The graphics are actually quite low tech and yet every inch of the game is a treat to be behold and, in those places without giant robot spiders, looks so enticing you immediately want to pack and go on holiday to Lana’s planet.

The soundtrack, by The Last Guardian composer Takeshi Furukawa, is excellent and towards the end there’s a short cut scene, accompanied by a song with lyrics, that is just wonderfully beautiful. There are a number of these brief non-interactive cut scenes (and one filled with QTEs) and it says everything about the game that they’re the most lasting, positive memory we have of playing it.

We hate to invoke the memory of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom in yet another unconnected review but while Humanity suffered the comparison very well, by being something completely different, Planet Of Lana’s puzzles are much closer to Zelda’s ballpark. However, with their rote solutions and mundane implementation they’re vastly less interesting and quickly sap your enthusiasm for what is only a six hour game – and one that’s free if you have access to Game Pass.

It’s not just big budget AAA games that try to sell themselves on impressive visuals and mediocre gameplay and ultimately that’s where Planet Of Lana sits too. If you’re playing it for free we encourage you to give it a go anyway, but we suspect you’ll get bored long before the end, no matter how pretty the backdrops are.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed), Xbox One, and PC
Price: TBC*
Publisher: Thunderful
Developer: Wishfully
Release Date: 23rd May 2023
Age Rating: 16

*available day one on Game Pass

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A new indie game that pays homage to classics such as Limbo and Inside also has some of the best graphics of the year.