'Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf' Review: Show, Don’t Tell

I couldn’t tell you how many times I scrolled past Planet of Lana on the Xbox Game Pass, or what finally convinced me to download it one night last year. What I can tell you is that it hooked me almost immediately with its visual style and gameplay mix of puzzle-solving and light platforming. Despite taking on a dramatically different tone from games like LIMBO and INSIDE, it delivered similar levels of immersion and clever puzzle design.

It’s been nearly three years since the original was released, and developer Wishfully Studios is ready to deliver a return trip to Novo with Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf. Now, the question becomes: Is it a journey worth taking?

Two years have passed since the events of the first game, making Lana a bit older and more capable physically. She’s joined by a pair of returning characters, her sister Elo and Rakuen, the old man who helped Lana in the original, and Anua, a newcomer who has joined the de facto family as a pseudo-little sister. Of course, of far greater importance, Mui, your chonky, cat-like companion, is back as well.

Things begin peacefully enough. You and Anua play a game of hide-and-seek on a derelict spacecraft where you’re reacquainted with Lana’s abilities and her symbiotic partnership with Mui. It doesn’t take long for problems to arise, however, as an unknown group is mining the planet and leaving pollution in its wake. When Anua touches an infected mineral, she slips into a coma. To create an antidote, Rakuen tasks you with traveling to three different parts of Novo to collect the necessary ingredients.

Playing through the game, it struck me that the setup feels a lot like the plot of Avatar. You have the peaceful natives living simple lives in harmony with the world around them, and then you have the invaders, known as the Djinnhala, that embrace technology and want to advance no matter the cost to the environment.

The similarities end there. Gameplay in Planet of Lana II is a continuation of the first game, though there’s been an uptick in variety and complexity. For example, early on, you need to reach an underwater item that’s guarded by some kind of electric-shark creature. You can’t outrun it. Instead, Lana gets in the water while Mui goes ahead and takes control of a fish, and you then have swim back to squirt ink at the shark. This obscures its vision, allowing Lana to swim down and get the item.

This is a good time to make a suggestion: Don’t use a walkthrough. Playing the game well ahead of the launch ensured I had to solve every puzzle alone. At one point I got stuck trying to spread a flammable substance in such a way that creates an opening to climb. I gave up, went to sleep, and literally awoke the next morning with an idea. I tried it out, and it worked. Going through those struggles made the payoff that much better.

Having said that, there weren’t many occasions when I was stumped for long. Most challenges are a mix of figuring out what to do and then how to do it, and the what is usually pretty clear right up front. So, while some solutions do require more steps than the first game, the mental challenge is on par.

Still, Planet of Lana II gets a lot of mileage out of expanding the world, and the ways in which Lana and Mui navigate it. Although you start in the green fields and shallow waters seen in the original, you’ll spend considerable time in snowy mountains, exploring underwater depths, and traversing a lush jungle. Along the way you’ll team up with Mui to bend living creatures to your will, override robots, dodge security cameras, make perilous jumps, and much more across an adventure that spans about six hours.

For the most part, the game is very well paced with the developers constantly throwing jumps and puzzles of varying challenge levels at you to solve. One caveat is a couple of short flashback sequences telling a bit of Mui’s story. Even though it's only being Mui, you still control him as you do with Lana, by moving an arrow with the right analog stick and clicking the right bumper to direct him. Since these are almost entirely story elements, it’s not a big deal, but it just felt weird to be directing Mui instead of just controlling him with the analog stick.

One thing that deserves special attention is Wishfully’s ability to tell its story without a word of understandable dialogue. As in the original, characters talk in an entirely made-up language, and outside of the intro, nothing is subtitled. Given how many games struggle to tell a coherent, impactful story with thousands of lines of dialogue, it speaks volumes about the world and characters that have been created here that at no point did I have any trouble following the game’s story beats or emotional conveyance.

Final Score (9/10)

Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf is what you want out of a sequel, building on the original’s gameplay and raising the stakes while setting it against a larger world. Everything feels like a natural expansion of what came before, and the presentation is excellent from start to finish. Based on how the game ends, here’s hoping we’re looking at a trilogy down the road.