Review | Planet of Lana II - The More the Mui-er
Should a sequel be a great departure from the original to tread new ground or build on the elements from the previous entry? It’s a question I kept returning to as I spent seven hours in Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf, a followup to the 2023 puzzle-platformer from Swedish studio Wishfully.
The original combined a stunning painterly aesthetic with a simple but effective sci-fi adventure starring the titular protagonist and her pet round boy Mui. The pair adventure together but sometimes split off from one another, with players controlling Mui with the right bumper and right stick to direct, Lana with the left stick, and both with the face buttons to solve puzzles of the mental and athletic variety. Whilst it was not the most innovative game, its mix of puzzle mechanics that forced players to avoid combat combined with its alluring visuals provided a pleasant experience. A game that was definitely more than the sum of its parts.
Use of that familiar phrase may sound damning with faint praise, but Planet of Lana was one of my favourites of 2023. A platformer of small scope but one full of charm and heart. That same spirit remains in its sequel, accompanied by a grander scale but hampered by some of the harsher qualities of the original.
Lana and Mui return alongside a larger cast of both new and old characters, with Lana keen to find out more about the origins of the titular planet and the android race that threatened her home in the first entry. This new, expanded setup gives way to a larger-scale adventure which, despite a poor ending with a deeply predictable twist as its destination, does manage to create an intriguing journey. The appeal of that journey is mostly down to the intentional decisions to amp up the score’s prominence, combined with improved visuals that include even stronger lighting and more intricate details in the environment. The presentation is fabulous: windswept snowy mountains contrast with tranquil forest dwellings and underground caves to create a breathing world as tangible and engrossing as the first game’s, but somehow even more stunning to look at, with Wishfully’s expanded scope allowing for more varied environments to showcase that artistry.
This greater scope and visual emphasis carries further into the game’s sci-fi narrative, with worldbuilding done in the background and presented via platforming-based exploration. With its increased scale, Planet of Lana II has an earnest admiration of space and nature that makes its world more of a puzzle to navigate, in-line with its gameplay. The ultimate intention is for players to desire to understand the world, taking the time to traverse forest hamlets and underground caves, which give way to areas showcasing revelatory murals and the discovery of new technologies as you progress, with the game presenting you with the opportunity to stop and ponder the subjects to piece together the history of the world. Crucially, the game avoids placing these details as optional extras — many of these elements are found front and centre as you continue along the main path. The camera also pulls away where necessary to present visual elements to the player as matters of great importance. The additional choice to have all dialogue be spoken in the native language of its human characters without any subtitling creates a required degree of interpretation by the player, further encouraging them to apply their own meaning to cutscenes and environmental stories. Doing all of this in combination results in the world feeling like a place worth exploring not just for its beauty but for understanding, in a way that’s much more satisfying than just traipsing between NPCs or reading endless diary entries. Sadly, the actual narrative isn’t as memorable, with a template seen many times before and a real predictability to its relationships and characters that doesn’t match the world’s own promise. Add to that the game’s disappointing ending and it feels like more could have been done to flesh out the story.
As for the gameplay, Planet of Lana II retains the strong mix of platforming and puzzle-solving with some more variation to address the key issue from the last game, which felt stagnant with little other challenge to throw up. The updated approach involves underwater puzzles with a deep sea capsule, new chase sequences, and more individual puzzles for Lana and Mui. The latter furball maintains the ease of control from the original game, with simple use of the right stick and right bumper on the controller to move her. The best addition comes in the form of more creatures that can be controlled by Mui to solve puzzles. This includes Ink fish to assist Lana in moving unseen past electric whales, and Rollers that secrete a gel that can create a trail of fire, setting alight large webs or manipulating blocks to allow Lana to move through levels. Whilst the game does start to repeat some of these later, this individuality — along with the control Lana gets of mechanised robots to do similar individual puzzles — does give this entry a more defined gameplay identity and create some excellent longform puzzles. Special mention should also go to the discipline of the camera, which moves naturally and zooms out where necessary to give players a lot more clarity in spaces where it could become confined and hard to manage.
The platforming is solid but does suffer from some occasional hangovers from the first entry. Namely, Lana’s momentum. The physics of the platforming emphasise momentum, with long jumps seeing Lana forward roll in a natural way, but this mechanic sometimes makes precision platforming frustrating, as a few isolated platforms in the mid-game resulting in some silly deaths born of easy mistakes. Whilst this is rarely an issue across the overall runtime, and helps to make the chase sequences more physical within the 2D space, it can grate on the nerves. Separately, it's only during chases where the platforming level design becomes truly dynamic. Otherwise, it is at its best when used as a medium for visual storytelling, but can fall into functional traversal that provides little challenge, aside from playing on the sliding puzzle in 3D space.
These elements bring me back to that central question: Does this sequel tread new ground, or just build upon what came before? Planet of Lana II is a game that finds itself between those two extremes. In some ways, it retains the visual and puzzling strengths of its predecessor and expands on them, yet it also accrues some familiar issues. Wishfully understands what it did well in the first game and seeks to scale things up, yet plays some of its platforming a little too safe. However, crucially, the game’s heart remains with its visual beauty and expanded gameplay, and that makes it again better than the sum of its parts. Hopefully, in the future the developers can take more risks to craft something more complete.
Planet of Lana II was played on Xbox Series X with a code provided by the publisher.
