I wasn’t able to get to many games during the Steam Next Fest this year, but I made it a point to check out Planet of Lana, an upcoming side-scrolling puzzle-platformer from Wishfully Studios and Thunderful Publishing. This game has been on my radar since Geoff Keighley’s Summer Feighleys, where its gameplay trailer awed me pretty easily. I will admit to being a sucker for spectacle, and the Planet of Lana trailer has that in spades.
We might compare this game to another game with a similar spectacular trailer, Somerville, as a cautionary tale of succumbing to hype. The aesthetics are certainly quite similar, juxtaposing idyllic countryside views with the presence of massive inhuman/inorganic monsters or structures, all while using a very painterly set of graphical textures. The two games share more similarities, particularly in the way they have players interact with the world.
While the demo only hinted at the dangers and challenges players might face in the main game, I thought it did a pretty good job of setting the table for what it’s all about. We play as Lana, a human child who seems to be alone and unconscious in this world that – as the game’s subtitle, “An OFF-EARTH Odyssey” would suggest – looks similar to, but isn’t our celestial home. Lana is joined by a small creature that looks like a cross between the playable creature in Badland and a cat.
While we have no control over this creature, we can order it to do things like sit and stay, chew ropes to lower drawbridges, and dive in holes to press inaccessible “buttons.” Around us is inscrutable technology mixed with the kind of roughshod woodwork a group of inexperienced exocolonists – or a bunch of kids – might perform in a hurry, to say nothing of the weird tentacle-y alien creatures scattered all over the place.
The difference between Planet of Lana and, say, Somerville lies in the former’s legibility. While Somerville made a hard commitment to a no-UI design, choosing to use environmental cues to show players where to go and what to do, Planet of Lana is unafraid of giving players reminders about which buttons to press and when to press them. As I guided Lana and her adorable alien companion through the basic obstacles of the tutorial that comprises the demo, not once did I get stuck because I didn’t have a rough idea of what to do.
And everyone is going to say it, so let’s just acknowledge it: Planet of Lana looks pretty as shit. The background painting is beautiful; the foreground art is excellent and clear. If you’re looking for a game that seems to do away with the kind of muddy, gray-brown grimdarkness typical of other cinematic platformers, Planet of Lana seems to be it.
In giving me a beautifully clear picture of what the early game is like, the Planet of Lana demo has me excited. I can’t wait for the full game’s launch to see where it decides to go.