From the moment Planet of Lana was first announced as an Xbox Game Pass title back in 2021, there was plenty of excitement surrounding its amazing visuals - and therefore a lot of hope that it would translate into an entertaining puzzle-adventure experience. Fortunately, developer Wishfully has managed to create something that lives up to the hype, offering up a short-but-sweet tale about a young girl and a planet in chaos.

The story starts out peacefully, but very quickly turns into something more sinister as robots begin kidnapping the people of the planet. Lana manages to escape this, and sets off on a journey to not only try and rescue her best friend, but also simply survive the many dangers now inhabiting her planet. This takes the form of a roughly five-six hour campaign where you'll be engaging in some very light platforming alongside a barrage of puzzles.

These puzzles often require you to think carefully about how to bypass enemies without them seeing you, such as creating a distraction with your feline companion known as "Mui". In others, you might need to arrange a series of platforms in the correct order, or use Mui's unique powers to take control of enemy robots in order to reach wires or buttons that weren't previously accessible. There's plenty of variety to these puzzles, and the key thing is that the difficulty balance is pretty spot on. You may find yourself getting stuck on occasion which can definitely lead to a bit of irritation, but ultimately we managed to figure everything out fairly quickly in the end.

Of course, the visuals are the big attraction here, and Planet of Lana looks absolutely gorgeous in motion. In addition to the beautiful backdrops which you can see in the images and trailer above, the main characters and various enemies benefit from smooth animations as well, while a couple of nice cinematic sequences also help contribute to an experience that really impresses in the graphics department. In addition, the orchestral score that pops up throughout the journey complements the visuals in a very effective way.

Despite all these positives, we still don't think Planet of Lana will necessarily be for everyone. If you don't like puzzles, you might bounce off it pretty quickly... it follows a very similar gameplay loop right until the end. You might also feel that the story isn't all that compelling, although it definitely picks up towards its conclusion. The voice acting is basically non-existent, so you're left to figure out what's going on for yourself - it's a stylistic choice, and it works perfectly fine for what it is, but at the same time we didn't find ourselves glued to the screen all that much.

It took us slightly over five hours to complete Planet of Lana, and while that might seem short, it felt like just the right amount of time for a game like this. We had a blast completing its unique and varied puzzles while also admiring the stunning scenery along the way, and it's definitely an experience that lives in the memory once you've completed it. This is the first ever release from Swedish developer Wishfully, and they've done a fantastic job bringing yet another superb indie adventure to Xbox Game Pass.