Planet of Lana is a narrative about fellowship. The puzzle journey desires gamers to have interaction and empathize with Lana and her cute companion Mui as they embark on a journey by way of an alien world that feels each acquainted and unusual, fantastically realized by way of a hand-painted artwork type that appears equally gorgeous in movement.

In-game, gamers might want to remedy puzzles as they traverse the world by giving directions to Miu, telling the cute monkey-like creature to comply with alongside, maintain again, or push forward to assist Lana unravel conundrums and (hopefully) keep away from hazard.

Although the burgeoning relationship between Lana and Miu is the beating coronary heart of the sport, the event crew opted to attract gamers into Planet of Lana by making a distinct emotional tone — quite than, say, spelling it out by way of voice-acted cutscenes or reams of textual content.

Speaking to Game Developer at Gamescom 2022, Planet of Lana co-director and author Klas Martin Eriksson defined the sport initially wasn’t going to have any dialogue, however after an inner back-and-forth the Wishfully crew determined to create a language from scratch that may very well be used to convey interplay with out turning into a blunt drive narrative instrument.

Less might be extra

“In the start we weren’t going to have any dialogue, actually. It was simply going to be communication by way of physique language,” says Eriksson. “But as we developed the story and began playtesting, we determined that we wanted another layer of emotional expression for it to work.

“That’s once we determined to jot down our language. Players will not really have the ability to perceive what [the characters] are saying, and there will not be any subtitles [that provide a translation], however if you happen to actually lean into it you’ll choose it up as you progress by way of the sport. We really feel it provides one other component the place tone of voice is worried and helps us higher talk the story.”

“You need to hold constructing a world that creates extra questions than solutions. That’s an enormous a part of maintaining gamers engaged.”

Eriksson provides that the narrative itself was impressed by a single image that offered the crew with a flurry of questions: Who’s the lady? Who’s the creature beside her? What’s that robotic and why aren’t they working for his or her life? Wishfully labored collectively to increase the story from there, fleshing out the world and studying who precisely their protagonists are — though it was a nebulous course of that took an enormous quantity of iteration.

“[Getting characters from A to B] is the straightforward half, however particularly in a online game you need to hold constructing a world that creates extra questions than solutions. That’s a massive a part of maintaining gamers engaged,” continues Eriksson. “I do not know what number of drafts we went by way of to succeed in the purpose we’re at now, nevertheless it must be greater than 100.”

By trying to create a narrative based mostly on a single picture, with out utilizing any instantly recognizable written or spoken language, Wishfully was offered with a novel problem. Eriksson, nevertheless, explains he cherished the thought of working with these limitations, as a result of these boundaries created a clearly outlined area for the crew to discover.

“I’m not a fan of an excessive amount of dialogue in video video games, and I do assume generally we’re responsible of taking a ‘inform do not present’ strategy to storytelling. So coming from a movie and animation background I needed to go in the other way and lean into visible storytelling,” he continues.

“You can accomplish that a lot with tone of voice and physique language. Like, so a lot. Obviously you communicate to Miu all through the sport, so already you are studying concerning the language. Then I attempted to make use of these phrases as a lot as attainable to assist the participant slowly achieve an understanding.”

The gameplay trailer embedded above reveals how Wishfully’s narrative philosophy is manifesting in-game, with Lana addressing Mui utilizing a sequence of phrases and directions that, whereas utterly unfamiliar, rapidly turn out to be recognizable.

Planet of Lana is presently slated to launch in early 2023. If you are to be taught extra concerning the undertaking’s visible journey, try this in-depth artwork and animation Q&A with Wishfully inventive director Adam Stjarnljus.