Planet of Lana is a cinematic sci-fi puzzle adventure game coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Xbox Game Pass in 2023. We recently had a chance to play the game and speak with its co-director and scriptwriter.<\/h2>\n
Developed by Wishfully, Planet of Lana is slated to join the Xbox Game Pass lineup in 2023 when it launches on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. We recently went hands-on with the game and spoke with Wishfully’s co-director and scriptwriter, Klas Eriksson, about the colourful adventure featuring Lana, an 11-year-old girl and her animal companion Mui.<\/p>\n
Planet of Lana gameplay trailer<\/h3>\n
When first coming across Planet of Lana, the game’s key art is extremely good at catching your attention. It depicts Lana and Mui looking up at a robot on a rock, but it would seem like it does more than just capture the attention of some; instead capturing the imagination. “Pretty much everything that came out of the game, including the script I wrote, sort of comes from the key art,” Ericksson said. “It’s been the guiding star from the beginning.” <\/p>\n
“Curiosity was definitely a strong emotion that I felt; it just looks like your childhood. When you think about being out in a field when you were a kid yourself, just out running and having fun playing with the wind in your hair.”<\/p>\n
The key and concept art were created by Planet of Lana’s creative director and lead game designer, Adam Stjarnljus, who began crafting the works a year before Wishfully was founded in 2018. Planet of Lana will be the studio’s debut title, and it all began with that concept art. Eriksson described it as a coming-of-age story, where Lana at the beginning is obviously dependent on her older sister, but after she is taken by the robots and everyone Lana knows is taken away, she’s left to figure everything out for herself \u2014 with the help of Mui, of course.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nPlanet of Lana is a sci-fi cinematic adventure game that features side-scrolling gameplay and puzzles without combat. After an army of robots invades Lana’s home world of Novo and kidnaps her sister in the ensuing chaos, Lana and her newfound companion Mui set out on an adventure to rescue her. Our time with the game during the hands-on session began after the event, during the game’s second Act when Lana and Mui are just beginning the exciting, yet treacherous, mission. <\/p>\n
Our time began with Lana lying unconscious on the floor of a woodland clearing with a small black cat-like creature, Mui, inquisitively nudging her until she awakes. With the gentle imagination-inducing soundtrack \u2014 which is composed by The Last Guardian composer, Takeshi Furukawa \u2014 and the watercolour art style, we were immediately intrigued by this one scene; a feeling that we’d carry through the demo with us. Once Lana is awake, the pair begin talking to one another in an alien language as they enjoy meeting each other for the first time. “We’ve written this language, a made-up language, that the inhabitants of this planet speak,” Eriksson said. “If you have an ear for language you’ll probably pick some stuff up, but there won’t be any subtitles or anything, so you won’t understand it verbatim.”<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nInitially, Planet of Lana wasn’t going to feature any form of dialogue, and the only form of communication between the pair was intended to be expressed through body language, with the storytelling portion of the game being told through the environments. The team at Wishfully felt like Lana and Mui needed another layer of emotional expression so that the story could be conveyed in a simple manner. “A lot of games sort of reverse that old adage of ‘show don’t tell’ so that it then becomes ‘tell don’t show,” Eriksson said. “Because we’re all from a film background, we really wanted to make sure that we use very simple means to tell a big, complex story.”<\/p>\n
During the time of discussing the game’s language we had crossed large grass-covered landscapes, jumped over crags and cliffs, and found ourselves at a very large gorge that neither of the pair could cross. This was the first puzzle of the game and our first opportunity to use Mui via commands. Mui reacts to commands like stay and heel, as well as others for directing her to a location, biting through something, and climbing through small openings. In this instant, we required Mui to sit on a black patch of reed-style plants to extend a branching vine so Lana could jump across to the other side and then do the same for Mui. “She’s like the most obedient little dog-creature you’ve ever known,” Eriksson said. “A lot of the gameplay is about figuring out how to use Mui and Lana together and separately to progress through the game.” While there isn’t any combat in Planet of Lana, enemies are another form of puzzle that requires you to work out how to bypass them without being caught.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nProgressing through the game will offer you a myriad of obstacles and enemy types to outsmart, and it wasn’t long until we came across one for ourselves. The creature is called a Stone Crab, which, unlike a conventional crab, is covered in hard stone and towers above Lana. As such, this was another form of puzzle, and we needed to use its large size to create a platform for us so we could traverse a large gap. While it didn’t care for Lana, it was very interested in eating Mui, so we commanded Mui to hide in a hole at the other end of the large opening to entice it over, creating a solid platform for us to continue our journey before calling Mui back. <\/p>\n
“We wanted a bit more of a three-act structure \u2014 a traditional sort of hero’s journey approach to the storytelling.”<\/p>\n
While the demo we were playing took place very early on in the story, we were told that the puzzles will grow in complexity as we progress through the game. Lana and Mui’s adventure will take them out of the forest and into various biomes, such as a desert, swampland, and even a wrecked spaceship underground. As much as the puzzles and reversal mechanics are at the forefront of Plant of Lana’s gameplay, the game’s story takes place across multiple layers. “The foreground is really the relationship between Lana and Mui, and how that develops over time, and then the next layer is Lana trying to save her sister and figuring out who these robots are,” Eriksson said. “But then there’s also details hidden in the background that tell a very rich backstory about how the humans ended up on this planet, where they’re from, what’s up with the robots, why they’re there. Even though it’s told through very simple means, it’s quite a layered complex story.”<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nPlanet of Lana will take around six hours to complete, and if our relatively short time with the game has shown us anything, it’s that we can expect a heartwarming adventure as Lana and Mui travel across the mysterious world. “We really felt like that’s a bit of a sweet spot for us because the story requires a little bit of a canvas to play out,” Eriksson said. “Really building that relationship between Lana and Mui and feeling that connection is super important to us.” While we didn’t get a chance to see too much of the pair’s growing bond, the demo seemed to show a growing connection nonetheless, which we look forward to watching flourish when the game launches next year. <\/p>\n
You’ll be able to play Planet of Lana yourself in spring 2023 when the game launches on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Xbox Game Pass. We’re definitely excited to experience the game in its entirety, especially after playing the game ourselves, but we’d love to know what you think. Drop a comment below to let us know what you think of this awesome game!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n