In Planet of Lana, the 2023 stylish puzzler from Wishfully, there’s a sweeping moment toward the end of the game that still sticks with me. The young Lana rides a robot across a desert while the camera pans back until she is an even smaller speck on a 2D plane than usual. A trail of kicked-up dust follows her as a variation on the game’s five-note theme plays. This moment, while brief, is a triumphant transition point for Lana’s journey. She’s no longer hiding or sneaking about, but advancing toward danger head-first as she and her cat-like companion Mui race to save Lana’s community — her friends, neighbors, her everyone — after they were captured by robotic invaders. It’s a standout moment in a beautiful game, and one I think of first when I recall the indie hit.
Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf, its sequel, has a similar moment. Lana’s not rushing off to save her people, but toward revenge. Instead of a triumphant orchestral theme scoring her journey, a chorus sings, its weighty vocals reminiscent of Halo’s music. The scene is dark visually and thematically — Lana and Mui race across a deep blue sky on a vehicle that sputters and crashes as the camera pulls back.
Even though the first game was about Lana rescuing an entire village’s worth of people from an uncertain fate, Planet of Lana 2 is somehow darker and more personal, with deeper puzzles than its predecessor. Everything comes together to make the 2D platformer of the year’s best games so far.
Two years have passed since Lana and Mui met and saved everyone, including her sister, Elo. In that time, Lana’s village has adopted some of the robotic technology into their way of life; you’ll see them ride the same robots that terrorized Lana in the first game like horses in the sequel. Lana’s a bit of a big sister herself in the opening; the first level has you chasing after a young girl through the wreckage of a spaceship. Eventually, they return to the village, where the young child encounters something that makes her sick, and the stakes are immediately raised as the game kicks into gear — Lana and Mui set off to gather three ingredients needed for a cure to save the child.
If it sounds like I’m being vague, that’s because details aren’t always immediately clear in Planet of Lana 2. Aside from the prologue recapping the first game, the entire game is told via a made-up language, meaning there’s ample room for interpretation. Like playing a FromSoftware game with opaque lore, I’m fairly sure I’ve pieced together the whole of the narrative, even as certain events and flashbacks left me with questions even after the credits rolled.
Without recognizable language, the vocal performances, animation, and music are the most important storytelling tools for developer Wishfully. The studio wields them with the expertise you’d expect of a veteran team, not one that is releasing only its second game. I might not know what specifically is being said, but the emotions are clearly communicated through voice acting, and the characters say so much through their body language and animations. (Especially Mui — that black blob of an alien creature has so much personality in the way it whines “mui” and scurries away from water.)
Planet of Lana 2 is about the personal relationship between Lana and Mui, but it’s also concerned with their relationship with their environment. The visuals of these games are compared to Studio Ghibli plenty, but the storytelling themes run parallel as well. At a certain point, the pair encounter a deer-like creature that would have fit in well in Princess Mononoke alongside the film’s Forest Spirit. Like that film, Planet of Lana 2 puts its focus on the destructive force humans can be unto the world around them. When a large machine ruins a stretch of forest, killing an innocent life along the way, Lana and Mui take revenge. That revenge is short-sighted, however, as Lana is constantly learning how her actions have consequences — not just for her, but the people around her.
The gameplay has grown in between games, just like the characters. You still navigate environmental puzzles and sneak around killer robots, but the characters have more tools at their disposal. Mui can hypnotize other creatures, like one who leaves a silk-like trail that’s used to catch flame and then burn down obstacles.
Another creature can shoot out a cloud of ink underwater, useful for obfuscating Lana from danger as she swims through levels. Swimming is new, and a large part of plenty of the game’s puzzles; Lana will swim around her village and through forests and caves. Some of the puzzles are quite expansive, needing Lana and Mui to essentially be on opposite ends of the area while still working in tandem toward a solution. None of them are terribly difficult, but sometimes solutions aren’t immediately present. I wasn’t always quite sure what Lana could and could not interact with in an environment. Those ones might be solved by brute force rather than calculated strategy, and I got Lana and Mui killed quite a bit in testing different options.
Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf once again tells a top-notch story, one I’m firmly invested in. I don’t just want to see where these characters go next (especially after Planet of Lana 2 has revealed so much about them and their world) but I need this adventure to keep on adventurin’. The year is still young, but Planet of Lana 2 is the best game I’ve played yet in 2026.
Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf will be released March 5 on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Steam Deck using a prerelease download code provided by Thunderful Publishing. You can find additional information about viraltrendingcontent’s ethics policy here.
