Planet of Lana is one of the most beautiful 2D platformers in a long time, not displaying the intricate graphical design of the Aura games perhaps, but instead offering its very own look, a series of gorgeous interludes, thought-provoking puzzles that does its best to channel prior games in the genre, but offer its own spin. Does it work? We're going to find out. Sit on back, subscribe for the channel. My sponsor's me. I buy a copy of every single game I get, even if the devs give me a code, and this'll be a Planet of Lana review. So Lana's story unfolds in this whimsical childlike style right from the start, characterized by an underlying casualness that feels almost surprising when you play it. You learn to navigate Lana's world, a quaint town depicted on wooden poles above the water, engaging in a game of... hide and seek with another child. You're immersed in the only audible dialogue that you get, which is Lana and her friend calling out to one another in this lonely hide and seek game. The game teaches you to skillfully sneak and creep and crawl and climb around through the village homesteads through Lana's experiences with her friend. Watching a little bit of that village life. While some may draw parallels to games like Limbo or Inside, playing a lot of Lana instantly transformed me back to the days of playing a title like Flashback. The sense of movement in the game, markedly different from the prevalent springy 2D platformers of the last couple years, creates this immediate feeling of realism and connection with the game world. However, its atmosphere leans towards the hopeful and bright, at least at the starting, presenting the player with a glimpse of world, that is actually worth fighting for or running for or puzzling for. Presentation is one place that Planet of Avalon does things just a little bit different, not perfect, not necessarily 100% different, but noticeable. So many games focus on the character to the point of making the worlds appear like they've been cleared out so that a clear camera angle is always present. And the player begins to feel like they're doing nothing more than skating across open section to open section. Planet of Lana does the opposite, making the world feel like a 3D location right from the start and requiring you to pay attention to which sort of section she is in within the game world. There are very few games that impress me this quickly, and Lana did, not with some stunning moment of surprise, but with that casual feel and the identity of a difference when it comes to depth in the game world. Colors and soft palettes of cool blues and faded greens and browns offsetting the natural locations. And then when the big moment does happen. The blue of the sky becomes that odd, darker blue of moonlight and danger. And with that transition, you can feel it shedding its innocence just like the character is. It is an amazing moment to show what has once been casual and familiar is starting to become alien. And there are. Aliens in the game or alien somethings as you move across the landscape, your friends are kidnapped by these robotic somethings of which you see not only small hints of their passage, but the occasional kidnapping itself like war. The world's with Tom Cruise in the movie, you being able to find the world's puzzles and figure them out are alone or later together with an animal friend and enemies that you consistently move through and forward are always teaching you something about the game world. You're searching for your family and friends. So each location or puzzle just has one more desire for you to get through it. One more bit of weight. While the game is imminently confident in his pacing, I can say that some gamers are going to chafe and on a screen or two, just watching Lana move through the game world, it can make you feel like it's a little bit slow. But to me, that makes the puzzles feel more natural than realizing each new screen is a puzzle and instead puts a sense of travel distance on the player and the character. Meaning that there's a pattern of three to four experiences that you're going to find intermixed and mixed travel, location-based puzzles, cut scene moments, and then multiple screen puzzles as well. Don't think of this as static puzzles on screens. When I say this instead, it's just a way of me describing the width of some of the locations where you find yourself working back and forth, questionably swollen, alien appendages, wet sucking out lake water so that you can wait across and carry your little alien cat who is certifiably not a fan of water. Luckily, in this game, the core foundation is the exploration and the puzzles. Now, puzzles can fade into boredom if the result is a puzzle that doesn't resonate with a gamer, or it can be a gift with another logic to find and another obstacle to feed it. Well, the game starts out with very simple puzzles, easily defined as move yourself here to make sure an enemy doesn't see you, and then sneak by. They quickly become more complex with you utilizing your friend's abilities to move through gopher like holes so that you can alert an enemy, then quickly sending them to safety while you're also leaping and climbing on the other side of the screen. If either one of you get hit by the enemy, you will start over. Consistently asking the gamer to pay attention while not being overly stiff or unfair in the amount of actions that you need to do is one of the moments of brilliance of Lana. It just works. There's no real issue where you feel that there's too much. And at the starting, while it feels lean, you know that you're just learning the basics. While not every puzzle is interesting, they do all tell a story, introducing Lana to some interactions like aliens mesmerized by your alien cat eyes and being able to push or pull local creatures by command or tricking enemies and then burnt in a way through a cave that they can't quite enter. Lana is though solidly a 2D platformer. So expect some climbing, some leaping, some lunging, hugging walls to hide from searching enemies, using and misusing the environment for what you need to be able to do. And a lot of listening to the environment to understand where enemies are. Be aware there really is nothing surprising about Lana's gameplay. It's not even trying to do that, especially in and of itself. It's the mechanical offerings and how they work in the atmosphere and mood that does help it. Now, something also entirely helped by this game is. one of the best soundtracks this year. Lana's soundtrack is one of the scores where hearing it just the first few moments when you get out of the main screen is a. downed. It's got a very movie like score, especially at the first with soaring sections, even though first couple moments, but that music is awesome as it continues to show a great deal of discrete flexibility and how it's going to end up mixing different instruments depending on what's going on and fading and layering between events. And it underscores why these tracks can play such a pivotal role in shaping a game's ambience and even its gameplay mechanics for the gamer. Music can subtly inform the player about impending dangers or hint at objectives or puzzle elements. It can also ruin those. The main menu music here is a solo piano piece accompanied by the whisper of the wind and gentle creaking of branches and a couple forest creatures. It doesn't quite prepare you though for the main game's score. It takes that simple track, introduces layers of strings and woodwinds and ebbs and flows those through musical landscapes as you continue to move forward. bursting out in dramatic crescendo depending on what you're seeing. But it's not all frolicking in the grass like a woodstock attendee. Happy go lucky times are not something that always exist in this game. For instance, there is a deep pulsating track for when you're exploring subterranean caves and working through puzzles. Suddenly, it sounds like a xylophone starting to play a game of cat and mouse with another instrument. Then as you confront the game's more unnatural enemies, there's a menacing drone kind of musical score that starts to play out. It's astonishing. This is a soundtrack that I don't just enjoy while playing the game. I listen to it outside the game. In fact, I was listening to it right before I started recording this. Honestly, the sound work itself in Lana is about as good as the soundtrack. And this astounded me because it's something that's very easy to miss in 2d games. But if you listen, the amount of Ideas and cues given to the gamer quite high effects to make the world seem bigger or remind you to make yourself as small as possible are also countless. For example, running besides a river, the sample filters in and out slightly adjusting right and left, but not always exactly in line with the cameras spot in the game. You can actually feel the river extending beyond the left and right of the screen. This is very smart use of how they handled ebb and flow of what's going on with a river and giving the player the feeling that the audio stretches farther. than you can actually see in those screens. Also, the samples for movement are thankfully warmer than a lot of games of this type. Lana's moving through bushes and grass, tall and short across rocks and wood beams and an assortment of natural and unnatural surfaces and just rubbing and scratching everything. Many games have a tendency to leave that telltale high frequency scratch of grass across pants or clothing, something that we hear up close when you're recording it. You can forget that with a camera set this far back, you wouldn't. And that natural filter of distance means that luckily movement is not matched with that kind of abrasive constant sound. The best part here has to be though the alert sounds of the enemy robots, something that are vital to how you play. Sure. You can hear them patterning around suspiciously thin legs. bodies everywhere makes you question exactly how it's possible. Then they let out some boops and beeps that echo across the stream when they're searching for you or they think they may have seen something. And those are awesome. They actually have a great sort of fake 3d kind of effect where those sounds travel up into the trees as well as right and left. Lastly, that mixing between all of this is really well done. The entire game has not a single time where stinger for enemies or attract changing didn't have incredible work to slowly. do so almost subsonically layering itself, even if it's not an instrument, but maybe even perhaps just a slow fade in tone that mixes into the track. Next time you don't get any of those abrupt cuts that we get in some other games. I loved the experience there in a game called planet. A Lana, you would think that Lana would do a lot of talking, but she does. Voice is incredibly lean in Lana with most of the audio being Lana and her occasional call to friends or their calls back or her yelling somebody's pseudo name. into the wind mixed with a lot more general sounds of affirmative or warning or ordering others to get puzzles done, but actually not formative words. This adds an alien atmosphere to the game where you find yourself leaning in recognizing Lana's name or voice, but rarely anything else. And that part works because as you learn some of her commands and thought processes and what she's doing, you don't need specific words for them. How does all this come together? How does the audio help the gameplay? And that's the fun factor. Planet of the Lawn exchanges inside and limbo's consistently cruel killing of the main character and world against them for what feels like the polar opposite. And that may not attract people, especially right at the starting. It is a slightly slower game. Lana's planet is exactly that though. Her planet. She is a native, meaning that the invaders are the ones who have difficulty finding and killing her. And in those locations, you get to feel that. At first, at least you're familiar with even just the general sense of what may be going on in a location. And I love that feel. Make no mistake, you're gonna fall mid-jump. You're not gonna scare a creature the way you should or time something wrong and die. But the sense of exploration and offset values compared to some other titles like this is pure bliss. And it feels good. It subtly reverses those positions while you continue to play and get challenged more and more. However, one place when it comes to the animation is that while it's next level shifts and movements of the characters, they leap off cliffs or climb on for dear life right next to an unsuspecting enemy like a painter inside their own painting. You can see depth and movement. that's great. Animation isn't always stellar when it comes to the connection with the game world, that working in tandem with the world environments. Sometimes the main character will just hang from ledges or move around and it doesn't really grab you as feeling connected to the game world. And this is in some odd places and it's something I would love to have seen. Occasionally there's also some stutter when you're moving in large scenes left to right. It's just one of those things that most likely has to do with the engine. It was very rare, but it did pop up and those are things that slightly impact. the fun factor. I love the style of gameplay though. It's not requiring the quick button presses or perfect leaps that you see in a lot of other games, but is instead more of a sedate package that like I said, really did remind me in many ways of flashback. So as you guys know, I rate games on a buy, wait for sale, rent or never touch it again rating system, rent being replaced by deep, deep sale on PC or just get it really, really cheap. And I will say that this is worth getting it. It's also on game pass, which is awesome. This is well worth a full price if you were going to get it. But if you already have a game pass subscription, you should be able to download this. Planet Alana is awesome. It's just one of those games that I love the way it presented its puzzles. Each puzzle was unique. Each puzzle felt at the same time alien and familiar, especially as you go in and things get more and more warped. Anyway, that's it for me. I hope you guys like the videos. If you do give it a thumbs up, check out the patron. Like I said in the other video, I just found out I was like 16.7 million less subscribers than Italy IGN. So that's my next, that's my next goal. That's what I'm going to try to hit at. Keep your eyes up, ears out for more videos this week. It is a tremendously busy week. And of course we have the events and I'll do some videos, probably do a patron video as well for the events that are coming out. Peace out. Enjoy the rest of your week. Female Intangible Cultural Property. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! ♪♪ ♪♪