Sometimes it’s interesting to put genre aside and think in terms of traditions. When it comes to genre, Planet of Lana is very easy to pinpoint: it’s a 2D side scrolling puzzle platformer, more specifically one that focuses on stealth and cinematic storytelling. Traditions, though? That makes it much more intriguing.
Planet of Lana reviewPublisher: ThunderfulDeveloper: WishfullyPlatform: Played on PC, XboxAvailability: Out now on PC and Xbox. Available on Game Pass.
The genre stuff alone is enough is to slot this in alongside games like Inside and Somerville – games with which it also shares an apocalyptic focus. the world is being over-run by horrors! Escape if you can! All good, but traditions can be surprising, and as I played Planet of Lana I found myself thinking a little bit about the idea of masterpieces. Not masterpieces in the modern usage of the word perhaps, but in the old sense – I may have this wrong but let’s go with it for now – of the piece of work someone makes to show to the world that they are very good at something.
This is the masterpiece in the sense of making something self-consciously excellent. Making something, perhaps, where the creation of excellence is the central impulse, winning out over specific mechanics to be explored or a story that simply has to be told. In this way, the 2D cinematic platformer is perfect. Just as all of, say, Wedgwood’s crowd knew what to expect from a bowl, so they could then judge that the Wedgwood bowl was just that little bit more refined in every way, modern audiences are familiar with 2D cinematic platformers. Limbo! Inside! All that jazz. We’re so familiar with what they do and how they work that the eyes have a chance to shift focus a bit, and notice those little marks of cleverness and lightly-applied skill – sunshine playing on grass, grass shifting in the breeze, breeze stirring the soundtrack and beckoning you forward from one ideally conceived encounter to the next.
All of which is to say that nothing in Planet of Lana is really a surprise, but I’m not sure it’s meant to be a surprise. It’s meant to be elegantly done, and smartly detailed, and free of frustrations. And it is. And over time I think it became something more too.
The game starts off in a delightful bucolic community where people live off the land and wear smocks and build houses on stilts out of wood. Everything is artful chunks of rock, little rivers, and backdrops that scroll and suggest that this paradise goes on as far as we can see. Sadly, invaders are on the way, black metallic ships with cages for capturing people, huge tankers on legs that are presumably here to drink all that water and process all that wood, smaller units that rove around at the human level killing anyone they see. And black goop too – part of the invasion? Something different? Something useful? Let’s see.