As a good fan of PlayDead as Inside e Limbowhen he saw the Planet of LanaI was immediately excited. And when I had the chance to play it beforehand, I didn't have to think long before accepting. And I confess it was the right choice, as I found a pretty decent game, but not perfect.
Announced in Summer Game Fest, Planet of Lana is developed by Wishfully Studios and arrives on the Xbox and PCeven being launched day one on Gamepass. And even though it was only an indie, it made some noise among the big AAAs present at the event.
What is Planet of Lana about?
As already mentioned, the game is clearly inspired by the two PlayDeadIn other words, it's a side-scroller, i.e. a game where you only walk sideways, widely known as 2D games, even though the game is clearly in 3D.
Despite the inspiration, Planet of Lana goes beyond what these two games have done, but let's go in parts. In the game we control a young girl, and through her we can obviously walk both ways, jump, grab, crouch, hang, swim, among other things that we learn later on in the journey.
However, while in Limbo e InsideIn Planet of Lana we have the help of our loyal companion Mui. Through them you can solve a wide variety of puzzles, and to do so, you give him orders.
The most basic of these is to send him to wait or to follow, but it's also possible to send him to specific locations, as well as giving orders for specific activities, and just like with the main character, as the story progresses, new abilities are unlocked.
The entire gameplay is basically based on the companionship between the young girl and the small animal, and together they face the challenges of the fauna and flora of their planet, as well as other challenges that I'll talk about later. But before I comment on these challenges, it's necessary to explain a little about...
The story of Planet of Lana
When it comes to the game's story, it's not easy to comment on, but it's not difficult either. Although this statement is a little ambiguous, it makes sense because much of the game's story is interpretative. This is because, as with the games mentioned in this review, in Planet of Lana we have no dialog or text to explain what's going on, leaving it up to our imagination to understand the story.
But even so, we have a context for what the game is about. You start the game in a village, accompanying another girl who may just be a friend or perhaps a sister. At this point, we accompany her and thus learn the basic mechanics of the game. However, at a certain point, strange objects start falling from the sky.
These objects turn out to be "extraterrestrial" beings, and it is through them that we have the other types of challenges I mentioned above. These creatures capture our friend and we set off on a mission to find and rescue her. The aliens have different forms and each one has to be dealt with in a different way, but it's always basically the same: act stealthily to find ways to escape or destroy the enemies. This is also true of the most aggressive animals found on the planet.
The mission is well defined, so where does the interpretative part come in? Well, apart from this more obvious part of the story, as we progress through the journey, we get to know a little more about the world we inhabit and those who inhabited it before. We receive a lot of information, and again, there's no text or dialog that explains exactly what happened, and it's up to us to interpret it according to what we see.
A striking look
Again, another comparison with the PlayDeadAfter all, there's nowhere else to turn, as these were games that became benchmarks for the genre. And here we have another big difference from the games, which is the game's color palette. While in Limbo e Inside everything is very monochrome, in Planet of Lana we have a lot of colors.
Basically, we have a color palette with a strong focus on greenish tones, but which are always "bright". The green tone reinforces the nature present on the planet and its variations of tones go well with the different scenarios we go through.
The game has a beautiful art style, which makes it feel like you're playing a painting, and is explicitly inspired by the movies of the same era. Studio Ghibli. The scenery, despite being very linear and simulating 2D, is always moving, whether it's the animals that live there or the constantly moving leaves.
Despite the well-defined color palette, we pass through several different scenarios, each of them very unique despite being, in theory, the same place. And although the color palette is basically shades of green, this doesn't stop the game from exploring other types of colors and shades in some scenarios.
The art direction is also very competent, with some beautiful shots in the game, although they are far inferior to the other games in the series. PlayDead. The game has some eye-catching framerates, but there are some cuts in the scenes that take away from the immersion.
The immersion of the game is reduced by cutscene transitions
This happens, I believe, in order to load the cutscenes, but it's common knowledge that it's entirely possible to achieve a smoother synchronization between the cutscenes and the gameplay. Before entering the scenes, a black or white screen always appears, which takes away from the immersion.
And it's strange because, in the gameplay, we're in the location of the scenes, and yet we have these little cuts that end up being annoying. But it's something that could be solved in a future update or improvement to the game's performance.
But despite this, we have very well-directed scenes that, when necessary, manage to convey the sensations we need to feel. Some scenes are chaotic, but in a good way, because that's exactly what it wants to convey.
If there's one thing that doesn't stand out Planet of Lana is the soundtrack, which isn't inspiring in the slightest, but doesn't get in the way and fulfills its purpose.
Operation summary
Planet of Lana is another one of those games commonly referred to as "gamepass standard". It's a beautiful and fun game that will give you a few hours of fun and reflection. It has a simple story, simple gameplay, but I often say that it's in simplicity that we find the real fun.
An important factor to note is that the game has localization in Brazilian Portuguese. It also supports a wide variety of other languages.
English 
Portuguese