Planet of Lana is a Puzzle Platformer with 2½D graphics from Wishfully Studios and published by Thunderful Publishing released on May 23, 2023 for the Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
On the Earth-like planet Novo, Lana and her big sister Elo live a humble existence in their small fishing village. Their lives are shattered when alien machines descend from the stars, capturing the entire village sans Lana.
Now Lana, along with a strange cat-like creature named Mui, must traverse the world, save her village, and stop these mysterious invaders.
Tropes of Lana:
- 100% Completion: There are achievements to get if you find the hidden shrines during the game.
- Alien Invasion: The game begins with several alien spacecraft falling from the sky, and robots starting to kidnap people.
- Anti-Frustration Features: You can turn off quick time events in the accessibility settings if you find them too difficult.
- Ascetic Aesthetic: The habitation area in the mothership is a huge white area with a little green vegetation and a hive-like structure, each person being locked into a cell that is a simple room with a large window on one side.
- Black Bead Eyes: Lana and other human characters have black dots for their eyes. Mui, being black, has white dot eyes.
- Bookends: The game begins with Lana and Elo running off from their village into the forest, arriving at the edge of a cliff where Elo gets kidnapped. At the end, the same scene plays out but without anyone getting kidnapped.
- Cats Hate Water: While Lana can swim, Mui won't touch water, so you need to find some other way to transport it over bodies of water you discover.
- Chase Scene: Twice in the game.
- After her encounter with Raquen, Lana rides into an alien base to sneak on a launching craft that takes her to the mothership. During her approach, she is being chased by robots.
- At the end of the final level, Lana is chased by robots as she approaches the reactor.
- Colony Ship: The planet's population are descendants from a colony ship that never made it to wherever it was originally heading.
- Disco Tech: Seemingly a part of the robot's communication-and-control system, with the robots emitting a pattern of tones when seeing things to attack and the giant robot sending deep bass tones across the landscape that resonate with the smaller robots. As these tones are present in the crashed Colony Ship and tones learned there can be used to override the robots, this hints at a common source for the two.
- Dream Sequence: There are two times in the game when Lana passes out and you get to play out the initial scene with some variation.
- Eternal Engine: The final part of the game takes place inside the alien mothership, among various machines. Game mechanics in this part includes moving bridges, magnetic gantry cranes, and others.
- Horse of a Different Color: Lana once rides a refurbished robot. Apparently Raquen deliberately made it look like a horse, with its eye protruding from its body like a neck, and even having a rein and a ribbon tied at its back side to look like a tail.
- Indy Hat Roll: Near the end of the final level, Lana is being chased by robots when she approaches the the reactor room, its doors closing. She enters at the last moment.
- Kid Hero: The Player Character, Lana, is a preteen girl.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Mui, a cat-like creature, helps Lana rescue her sister and the rest of her village.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: If either Lana or Mui touches a hostile creature or robot, it's game over and you have to restart from the latest checkpoint.
- People Zoo: The alien mothership is revealed to be a holding area for humans Lana gets aboard.
- Percussive Maintenance: Raquen has a machine that revives a crashed robot. He hits it with his staff to make it work.
- Playable Epilogue: At the end of the game, you get to play the first scene again and see how the events of the game changed the life in the village. Now that the robots are turned to your side, they are seen helping out the villagers in various tasks.
- Press X to Not Die: While most of the gameplay is a classic Puzzle Platformer, there are some action scenes that require quick time events to advance.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Even though the crashed spacecraft has been lying there for quite a long time, there are machines that are still working, even if haphazardly.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Mui looks like a stylized cat.
- Scenery Porn: There are several places with gorgeous vistas throughout the game. Some sections even go on for a little while just to give the player an opportunity to take it all in.
- Shifting Sand Land: During her journey, Lana travels across a desert area. It involves mostly sandy terrain with rock outcroppings and some grass. Compared to the previous, lush and elaborate forest areas, this is much more flat and bare.
- Speaking Simlish: The language spoken in game is a creation of the game makers, with no subtitles available, leaving it up to the player to deduce the story from context alone.
- Tomboy: Lana has short hair and wears pants. She might be easily mistaken for a boy was it not for her name.
- Tron Lines: Alien technology is lined with light blue lights. They become white once you take control of them.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Most of the gameplay is typical for a Puzzle Platformer: you walk around and find out how to progress to the next section. Then there are some action scenes that involving Quick Time Events or just running in the right direction while being chased by robots.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: It's implied the robots are simply following their programming, trying to wrangle up the humans and continue heading for the colony ship's original destination, but with a bit of murderous programming corruption.
- White Void Room: In the final chapter, before you enter the habitation area, there is a huge white area with reflective floor and very little decorations. Even structural elements are simple gray lines instead of the gritty metal surfaces of the previous area.
