The benefits of narrative limitations in heartfelt adventure Planet of Lana

gamedeveloper.com:

Planet of Lana is a story about fellowship. The puzzle adventure wants players to engage and empathize with Lana and her adorable companion Mui as they embark on a journey through an alien world that feels both familiar and strange, beautifully realized through a hand-painted art style that looks equally stunning in motion.

In-game, players will need to solve puzzles as they traverse the world by giving instructions to Miu, telling the adorable monkey-like creature to follow along, hold back, or push ahead to help Lana unravel conundrums and (hopefully) avoid danger.

Although the burgeoning relationship between Lana and Miu is the beating heart of the game, the development team opted to draw players into Planet of Lana by creating a distinct emotional tone -- rather than, say, spelling it out through voice-acted cutscenes or reams of text.

Speaking to Game Developer at Gamescom 2022, Planet of Lana co-director and writer Klas Martin Eriksson explained the game initially wasn't going to have any dialogue, but after an internal back-and-forth the Wishfully team decided to create a language from scratch that could be used to convey interaction without becoming a blunt force narrative instrument.

"In the beginning we weren't going to have any dialogue, really. It was just going to be communication through body language," says Eriksson. "But as we developed the story and started playtesting, we decided that we needed one more layer of emotional expression for it to work.

"That's when we decided to write our language. Players won't actually be able to understand what [the characters] are saying, and there won't be any subtitles [that provide a translation], but if you really lean into it you'll be able to pick it up as you