What a gorgeous puzzle platform adventure with an amazing sounds track as well. I was very emotionally invested in the story of Lana. Planet of Lana has an achievement for complete the game without dying. Takes around 8h to 100%
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 8h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 10/10 without save scum trick, otherwise 8/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this achievement guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, there are 2 missable achievements. You’ll have to play through the whole game without you or your companion dying.
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Planet of Lana is such a beautiful platformer/puzzle/adventure game. You play as Lana and will go on a very stressful adventure to find your missing sister. While something weird is happening in the world with robots who are kidnapping humans and burning their cities. What are they doing with them, where is everybody and most important where is your sister, is she safe?
As stated above, the game has gorgeous artwork. Not only is the artwork beautiful but the music and the sound effects are outstanding as well. They make that you’ll get immersed into the game quite quickly and you’ll be emotionally invested. and believe me, Planet of Lana will pull on some heartstrings.
The puzzles in Planet of Lana will start easy. However, they will get more complex the further you get and also will be time/skill based. I heard from others that they found the puzzles easy, but I needed some time to figure some of them out. This might be because I almost finished Planet of Lana in one sitting and was tempted to get a break in between but I was so close to finishing that I decided to just keep going. This might not have helped with my concentration but I was just so emotionally invested in the story.
What I have been wondering throughout the game, Lana will shout out for her missing sister during the game, but when she does that at the start of a new area, she doesn’t know if that would help her find her sister or if she just told the enemies she is coming. It helped with feeling how hard she tried to find her sister, but my logical brain found it quite dangerous to do so.
There were a few small things that I encountered and was less impressed by. For example, some of the loading screens were white, while most of them were black. I prefer black as white is so bright and I don’t understand why some of them are even white. Another thing that I encountered quite a lot is that the character movement is sometimes a bit off. I couldn’t count how many times I thought I made jumped at the right time but ended up dead because I just barely missed the edge. It isn’t too bad as there are quite a lot of spawn points even in the middle of puzzles, but it sucks if you’re going for the achievement for completing the game without dying.
Speaking about the achievements; a lot of them are story related and can’t be missed. For that reason, I would not recommend scrolling through guides or achievement-tracking websites as you might get spoiled. On your own profile, they are hidden, so you won’t get spoiled. There are also 11 achievements that have something to do with the 10 hidden shrines that can be found, and believe me, they are really quite hidden. During the game but also after finishing it, you can use chapter select to find the missing ones, and looking up where they are is quite easy as the achievements are numbered. And then there are the 2 achievements for which you need to complete the game without dying. This is so hard to do, not only because movement isn’t always fluent, but also because a lot of puzzles require a bit of trial and error, and that isn’t possible if you go for this achievement. I understand why they added it to the game as it adds an extra layer of you caring for Lana and your companion Mui but it is brutal. On PC it is possible to save scum your way through this achievement, but on consoles, it is just almost impossible to do this. You will also only know if you succeeded at the end of the game, there is no way during the game to know if you’re still on zero deaths.
I loved playing through Planet of Lana, it is beautiful and emotional and just amazing. However, I would highly recommend not going for those last 2 achievements to keep your sanity and enjoy the game even more.
This review for Planet of Lana was written on 23 May 2023, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 25 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.