Planet of Lana

Planet of Lana tells a fairy-tale-like yet emotionally urgent story of a girl named Lana who, together with a small feline companion named Mui, sets out to save her sister and her village from an invasion of robotic alien forces. The game unfolds in a picturesque, hand-painted world inspired by Asian nature and architecture, and from its very first minutes emphasizes the fragile but firm bond between the two main characters, who must learn to trust each other just to survive their first encounter with the machines.

Mechanically, it's a 2.5D puzzle platformer in which the player directly controls Lana, while Mui reacts to simple commands and helps solve puzzles — for instance by distracting patrolling robots, opening up paths, or helping with acrobatic passages across chasms and precarious ledges above the void. The puzzles largely rely on timing, stealth passages around the machines, and cooperation between the two characters, while the game deliberately avoids violence, building instead on the tension of silent pursuit and escape from an overwhelming force. Gradually, other animal companions join Lana and Mui's bond, bringing new mechanical possibilities and expanding the range of solvable puzzles as the pair ventures deeper into machine-controlled territory.

On PlayStation 5, where the game arrived roughly a year after its debut on other platforms, the finely rendered scenery and the fluid, hand-animated movement of the main characters, reminiscent of film animation, truly stand out. The accompanying orchestral score heightens the emotional tone of the whole narrative. Planet of Lana was received as a visually stunning and emotionally affecting title that showed the small studio Wishfully could deliver a cinematic experience comparable to much bigger productions in the genre — and do so without a single spoken line of dialogue in the entire game.

Why play it: For lovers of cinematically told stories without a single spoken word, where hand-drawn animation and an orchestral score can strike just as powerfully as much bigger productions.