If you have Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf is yours on launch day — March 5, free with your subscription. You can also try the demo right now on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation before the full thing drops. If you’ve never heard of this series, give yourself 30 minutes with the demo. You’ll know immediately whether this is your kind of game.
Quick verdict: if you’re on Game Pass, this is a day-one play. Genuinely good studio, genuinely better sequel based on preview coverage, and it’s included. If you’re not on Game Pass, the demo is free. Try it first, decide after.
What Was Planet of Lana?
The original Planet of Lana launched in May 2023 as the debut game from Wishfully, a small studio in Sweden — and it delivered. Metacritic 80, OpenCritic 81 with 80% of 89 critics recommending it, 7,150+ Very Positive reviews on Steam. Edge gave it 9/10. GamesRadar gave it 4.5/5.
The setup: a girl named Lana and her companion Mui — somewhere between a cat, a monkey, and a small dog — are the only ones who can resist a robot invasion of their home planet. No English dialogue, no spoken language you can understand at all. The story unfolds entirely through visuals, Mui’s reactions, and an orchestral score composed by Takeshi Furukawa — the same person behind The Last Guardian’s music. That comparison gives you a sense of the emotional register.
What critics agreed on: the art direction and atmosphere were exceptional for a debut game. What they split on: the gameplay was too forgiving. Puzzles were accessible to the point of being gentle, the stealth sections had low consequence, and the whole thing wrapped up in about 4-5 hours. People finished Planet of Lana wanting more. The sequel is the more.
What Actually Changed in the Sequel
Wishfully didn’t just make the map bigger. The mechanical differences between games address the exact criticisms the first one got:
Lana moves differently. She’s older and more athletic. Wall jumps are in. Her movement has actual momentum — she doesn’t feel weightless like a lot of 2D platformers do. According to Eurogamer’s four-hour hands-on preview, this changes how you interact with environments, not just how fast you cross them.
Mui has upgraded abilities. In the original, Mui could follow you, scout ahead, hold position, and activate switches. In the sequel, he can override machines and hypnotize certain creatures to control them. Eurogamer previewed one sequence that shows what this actually means: Lana needed healing seaweed guarded by an electric sea beast in an underwater section. Mui hates water and won’t swim, but you can use his powers to pilot small fish through underwater passages, luring the beast away from the plant. Then Lana — swimming against a timer because she can actually drown — has to trap the creature by closing a gate before it returns. That’s a multi-step timing puzzle with real environmental stakes. That’s a different game than the first one.
New environments across the entire runtime. The original was mostly temperate forests and ruins. Children of the Leaf adds underwater sections as a full mechanic, snowy mountain fortresses, swamp environments, a running-train level, and a shanty town. Seven or eight distinct biomes across a 6-8 hour game. The pace doesn’t stagnate.
The stealth is harder. Eurogamer mentioned “more than one occasion” of being genuinely stuck figuring out how to bypass a robotic sentry. That’s not something reviewers said about the first game. The puzzles are more complex across the board.
What Critics Are Saying Before Launch
These are preview impressions, not full reviews — the game isn’t out until March 5. Worth stating upfront. But the early coverage is notably positive from outlets that played it:
Eurogamer’s hands-on said the game “offers the same warmth, but also a welcome step up in puzzling challenge from the original.” IGN described early footage as “like a Star Wars story made by Studio Ghibli.” Polygon wrote about “a protagonist and world that feels far more sophisticated.”
Wishfully’s creative director Adam Stjärnljus explained the decision to add underwater sections in a way that suggests intentional design work rather than scope expansion: “A platformer is limited in exploration by definition. You can go left, right, up or down. That’s it. So it felt like a very natural step to go down.” That kind of reasoning about constraints usually produces better games than just adding content. The underwater mechanic also gets an elegant wrinkle from the first game — Mui is famously bad with water, which means his inability to swim becomes a puzzle element rather than just a character detail.
The Demo Is Out Right Now
This is the most useful part of this article: there’s a free demo available today on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation (Switch and Switch 2 demo coming later). It covers the opening of the game.
If you’re a Game Pass subscriber, you’re playing the full thing on March 5 anyway — but try the demo now to get your hands on the controls before launch. If you’re not on Game Pass and wondering whether $24.99 on Steam is worth it, the demo will give you a cleaner answer than any review will. You’re either going to feel the pull of this world in the first 20 minutes or you’re not.
Which Game Pass Tier Gets You In?
Planet of Lana 2 is day one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Standard subscribers — Game Pass Core, the tier that mainly covers online multiplayer — won’t get it through the subscription.
If you’re on Ultimate, cloud gaming works well here. This is a slow-paced cinematic puzzle game with no frame-perfect inputs, no competitive online component, no reason you need a local download. Playing it via cloud on a tablet or a TV through the browser is a legitimate option, and the performance ceiling you need is low.
Also hitting Game Pass this same month: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 on March 3. March is a strong Game Pass month. If you’ve been on the fence about a subscription, that’s two well-reviewed games in one week. A 3-month Game Pass Ultimate subscription from Amazon covers everything in the March wave.
Should You Play the Original First?
You don’t have to. The developers explicitly call this a standalone experience, and the story sets up the context for new players. But the emotional weight of Lana and Mui’s relationship hits harder if you know where they started. The first game is 4-5 hours and currently $14.99 on Steam — also check your Game Pass library because it was a day-one title in 2023 and may still be available.
If you can play the original before March 5, do it. You have enough time. If you can’t or won’t, Children of the Leaf will still make sense — you’ll just be working with less history between you and these characters.
The $24.99 Question (For Non-Game Pass Players)
Planet of Lana 2 is expected to land around $24.99 on Steam at launch (pre-release key sites are listing it around that range; verify on Steam on March 5). For context: the original is $14.99. GRIS launched at $16.99. Inside is $19.99. The genre’s price tier sits roughly in the $15-25 range for a game of this length and scope.
At $24.99 for a 6-8 hour sequel to an 80+ Metacritic game with genuine mechanical improvements and positive hands-on coverage, that’s in the reasonable range for fans of cinematic puzzle platformers. The demo makes this a low-risk decision either way — try it, then decide.
If you’re playing on PC and want the best experience, the game is built around gamepad input. The stealth sections in particular are designed for analog sticks. A wireless Xbox controller works natively on Windows with no setup required.
What to Expect When You Sit Down
- 6-8 hours, single playthrough. No confirmed New Game+ or replay hook. If you need post-credits content loops, this isn’t your game this week.
- No English dialogue — by design. The alien language is intentional. You’re interpreting the story through visuals and music, not being told what to think. If that sounds exhausting, the demo will confirm it for you either way.
- Emotionally paced. Quiet moments between puzzles. Deliberate. Not a high-energy game. If you want something action-forward this week, look elsewhere.
- The puzzles are harder than the original. If you found Planet of Lana 1 too easy, the sequel addresses that. If you liked the original specifically because it was accessible, be aware the difficulty has stepped up — though preview coverage suggests “genuinely challenging” rather than “punishing.”
- Controller recommended on PC. Plays fine on keyboard/mouse, but the stealth sequences are designed around analog input.
The Bottom Line
Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers: try the demo today and mark March 5 on your calendar. A day-one title from a studio that earned its reputation on a strong debut, with the specific problems of the first game addressed in the sequel. Eurogamer played four hours and came away convinced. That’s enough to make this a must-play for the subscription.
Not on Game Pass: download the demo right now. Thirty minutes will tell you more than a 2,000-word review will. If the world pulls you in, $24.99 is a fair price for 6-8 hours of a hand-painted cinematic adventure with improved mechanics and a story that picks up where the original left off. If it doesn’t click, you walked away for free.
Planet of Lana 1 left people wanting more. March 5 is when they get it. Try the demo on Steam right now.
