Planet of Lana Review (Switch eShop)

The cinematic platformer: though some nice examples have emerged over the a long time, the style maybe under-celebrated, with its followers particularly under-served for an extended stretch within the 2000s. It has nonetheless supplied some actually legendary video games: Prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, and Inside. Planet of Lana gathers collectively essentially the most interesting parts of all of those – together with different notable examples of the style – and rolls them up into one thing fashionable and fascinating, if not fully unique.

Planet of Lana, the debut title from indie developer Wishfully Studios, is a visually putting puzzle-driven platformer. It has shades of Studio Ghibli in its muted palette and nature-versus-technology themes; it additionally maintains a low-stress environment by its mild issue, sweeping surroundings and wealthy musical rating. The story begins with Lana enjoying video games with a buddy. A sudden robotic invasion results in her buddy’s seize and kicks off a quest to rescue her. Alongside the way in which, Lana is joined by an alien sidekick, with whom she cooperates to beat obstacles and stealthily evade baddies.

Whereas feeling and looking fashionable and accessible, Planet of Lana makes some neat callbacks to basic cinematic platformers. One function of these early video games, for instance, was a sort of modularity. Prince of Persia and the like achieved cutting-edge animations by shifting their characters in little chunks. Every unit of the slick, rotoscoped animations all the time performed out, with the participant’s subsequent transfer – altering course or timing a leap – solely following after a step of the animation. A facet impact of this was a kind of “leap help”, the place the lag within the controls gave beneficiant home windows wherein to manoeuvre. Though Planet of Lana is way more fashionable, corresponding to marrying its flowing visuals with larger responsiveness, it fortunately replicates that forgiving nature by permitting a really beneficiant “coyote time” – a wide-open alternative to hit leap even simply after working off a platform.

A facet impact of the flowing however mounted animations in older cinematic platformers was an equally modular degree design: Lester in One other World, Conrad in Flashback, and the Prince of Persia all moved in predefined chunks, so the degrees have been composed of items of a corresponding measurement. Flashback’s gun fight additionally operated in discrete items of motion, so scenes performed out like a sequence of pre-calculated puzzles. Planet of Lana completely harks again to this, the world being constructed of a sequence of set items, constructed round a basic moveset of runs and jumps, ledge-grabbing, and rolling. The general result’s a extremely playable mixture of contemporary fluidity and retro specificity, with a give attention to mild, sequential puzzling over exploration.

Traversal is sleek and pleasing, too, extra like Playdead’s Inside than the abstracted controls of the classics, constrained by these animations. Whenever you’re working, leaping, climbing, or swinging on ropes, all of it feels stable and enjoyable. If there’s one criticism, it’s that there’s a bit an excessive amount of time spent simply working proper, with out important obstacles or any want for different inputs. It made us consider Beethoven & Dinosaur’s The Artful Escape, which used a easy – even foolish – however fairly ingenious concept of including a single button press to play a guitar whereas the hero runs. Wanting a guitar, Planet of Lana might need benefitted from a extra playful leap or roll to toy with whereas working.

“Simply working proper” is a symptom of the cinematic platformer’s fashionable drive for spectacle. Because the background and foreground explode with colors, flashes and world-enriching depth and scale, working proper is a option to have it play out in a means that the participant can sit again and recognize. Planet of Lana opts with confidence for that low-difficulty design method, releasing you to drink within the spectacular surroundings and soundtrack. It does imply all of the occasions lack a component of peril – not like, say, Adrian Lazar’s Planet Alpha, which used skill- and patience-testing challenges to offer the visible set items a little bit of oomph. Planet of Lana’s simple working is tons of enjoyable in the event you’re completely happy to play fairly passively at occasions.

And the spectacular presentation helps construct the story – to an extent. The narrative is obscure, to say the least, so whereas the beautiful vistas add flavour, it’s not all the time clear what they’re including flavour to. The less-is-more method nearly works, and we loved the reminder of One other World with its alien helper. Calling the alien in an unknown language and dealing to assist one another, the connection is slightly like guiding Yorda in Ico, with some comparable, if spatially extra simplistic, puzzles. There may be, in truth, one other free Ico connection: composer Takeshi Furukawa gives the rating, as he did for Fumito Ueda’s Ico descendent The Last Guardian. The music sits quietly within the background for the regular play of the sport, spinning up the stress successfully for the motion and stealth interludes, shifting from mild piano to highly effective orchestra, even breaking at one level for a vocal set piece.

Lana’s critter companion does a bit greater than observe alongside and obey orders, too. By it, Lana can management enemies for sure puzzles, paying homage to 2023’s One other World-callback Full Void, from OutOfTheBit. These are a few of the extra fascinating and difficult puzzles amongst a reasonably mild assortment. When ordering your companion, manipulating the atmosphere, steering enemies and platforming all mix, the world feels richly interactive. Nevertheless, these moments are scarcer than the bits the place you simply run proper.

Conclusion

Planet of Lana intelligently combines parts of basic cinematic platformers to make one thing distinctive and characterful. For a decent 5 hours or so, it retains up the tempo, with only a few taxing puzzles or tough motion segments to gradual progress. Leaning into simpler gameplay in favour of visible and auditory spectacle, it appears to be like the half and runs constantly effectively. It’s a deal with for the long-suffering cinematic platforming fan – maybe even destined to hitch that brief listing of classics.