**Planet of Lana 2 Review**
Despite a few underdeveloped ideas, *Planet of Lana 2* is a bigger, smarter, and even better-looking puzzle-platformer than the charming original.
– **Developer:** Wishfully
– **Publisher:** Thunderful Publishing
– **Release:** March 5th, 2026
– **On:** Windows
– **From:** [Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2997230/Planet_of_Lana_II/), [PC Game Pass](https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/planet-of-lana-ii/9pl89b9hcz9w)
– **Price:** TBC
– **Reviewed on:** Intel Core i9-10900K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3090, Windows 10; Steam Deck OLED
The original *Planet of Lana* proposed a science fiction fantasy that appealed on two levels: one, being able to adventure through a wondrously lush exoworld, and two, having a cat who actually listens to you. *Planet of Lana 2* is more of the same, on both counts, while adding enough athleticism to its platforming and depth to its puzzling to feel like a worthwhile sequel.
Not that it avoids a slightly odd start. For all the leafy forests, snow-carpeted mountains, and tropical undersea trenches that you’ll eventually see Lana – and feline-ish alien companion Mui – through, game number two begins in a series of grey corridors. It’s here, mind, where Lana reveals she’s been keeping up platforming practice in the intervening years, and is able to sprint, slide, and wall-jump from the off. All simple tricks, but ones that give the physical challenges more of a flowing, dynamic quality than the occasionally sluggish clambering of the original.
Mui, too, is a more helpful blob-buddy. While still needing cursor-pointed direction, they’re no longer limited to waypoints that barely extend beyond Lana’s own arms, thus permitting them to boing around puzzles, gnawing cables and dropping ropes at the very extremes of the screen. Their hypnotic power over the planet’s fauna now extends beyond simple movements and into full player control, adding ink-blasting fish and colonies of sticky, rolling cloud creatures to your solving toolbox.
To accommodate the empowered duo, the puzzles themselves have in turn expanded. Often literally: *Planet of Lana* steadfastly kept each of its brainteasers to a single screen, but enabled by Mui’s unleashed range and the freely controllable wildlife, many of the sequel’s most memorable puzzles feel massive by comparison. Flying and swimming creatures, especially, lend themselves to sprawling, multi-stage conundrums that have you flicking attention between Lana, Mui, and your captive thrall like the character select screen of an indecisive Street Fighter player.
This is not a complaint. The back-and-forth dance between Lana and Mui was central to the first game’s effectiveness in staving off crate-pushing fatigue, an affliction that can prove fatal to lesser puzzle-platformers. Bigger, more intricate puzzles might have raised the risk of getting stuck and burning out, but the thoughtful, often tactically pleasurable suite of expanded powers and movements turns those scaled-up challenges into some of 2’s most satisfying highlights. You may have already played one of these in the demo: an elaborate infiltration of a submerged cave network, beautifully stitching together well-timed swims (both Lana’s and those of mesmerised fish) with underwater stealth (the coral is patrolled by crackling electric sharks) and management of the aquaphobic Mui.
Not unlike Lana’s squeaking BFF, these helper critters are also invariably cutesy and boopable, in a way that all but guarantees someone on Etsy will be selling stickers of them by the end of the week. This does make it weird, however, when you start marching them to their horrible deaths. Yes, thralls will straight-up perish if steered into hazards, and while this doesn’t reload a checkpoint – as is the case if, say, you send Lana ragolling off a cliff – the infinite resupply of replacements hardly discourages carelessness. In fact, sometimes it’s necessary to beat a puzzle, like hurling those rolling cloud bois into a fire pit to ignite the flammable trail they leave behind. Or using fish as shark bait. Or locking a giant bug in a cage, where it presumably starves to death offscreen. In my playthrough, Lana and Mui slaughtered their friends in all these ways and more. They may be the most prolific serial killer duo since the Wests, and yet the game never addresses, even ironically, their campaign of bloodletting.
In fairness, it’s all for a good cause. Having previously rescued her sister from robots, Lana must now rescue
