Coming in 2023 to PC and Xbox Series consoles and that old One you’ve still got creaking away under the TV, Planet of Lana is a gorgeous-looking side-on puzzle-platformer that mixes incredibly attractive visuals - think Breath of the Wild by way of Studio Ghibli - with some surprisingly brutal one-hit-kill enemy encounters that are akin to the grisly deaths of Limbo or Inside. Playing it at Gamescom 2022, I’m immediately smitten - and as a day one title on Game Pass, it’s one that I know I’ll be catching up with again as soon as it drops.
Check out the new Game Pass trailer for Planet of Lana below
The game is set on an unnamed but Earth-like planet, the player assuming the role of Lana as she meets and befriends a very helpful creature companion. As beautiful as the world is, it’s one of incredible danger as mechanical beings from beyond the clouds have invaded, and will strike Lana down if they spy her, puncturing her slight frame with spindly limbs. With no weapons to hand, no means with which to fight these robotic nasties, she has to stealth her way past patrolling sentries, taking cover in long grass and hiding behind other environmental objects as best she can. It’s a case of timing, deep breaths, and ducked-down dashes for safety.
When not taking cover from lethal mechanical monsters, Lana and her companion have plenty of puzzles to get stuck into, from the basics - move a crate from A to B to reach ledge C - to more complex, multi-part head-scratchers which require the separate control of our animal pal. It can be commanded to go to a particular place on the screen and do something, like chew through a rope or simply stay put to activate a pressure-sensitive platform (weirdly organic and tendril-like, but I guess that’ll be explained later). These dual-protagonist puzzles are really rewarding to work out, and the deeper the player goes into Planet of Lana, the more the pair will have to collaborate to stay alive. And, no doubt, the closer their bond will become.
I don’t get to see some of the gloomier, more oppressive-looking surroundings shown off in promotional screenshots, my preview being set exclusively in the bright sunshine - although the sight of a still-smouldering crater, dug into the dirt by one of the machines’ falling pods, is a reminder that this place isn’t as serene as it sometimes seems. But what’s been shown in the trailer above suggests that this is a game that gets a lot darker, and could well get under the player’s skin in the same way as Playdead’s aforementioned brace of 2D classics. Its makers at Swedish studio Wishfully (publishing duties are handled by Thunderful) are promising a story that “stretches across galaxies and centuries”, which is big talk for a game that on first impressions is incredibly intimate, but I’m excited to see where this one takes the player when it comes out. I’m expecting the fantastical and the otherworldly - and quite probably the horrifying, too.
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Planet of Lana releases for PC (Steam and Windows 10), Xbox One and Series X/S consoles in early 2023, and will be available day one on Game Pass.
Featured Image Credit: ThunderfulTopics: Indie Games, Xbox, Preview