Children of the Leaf uses an invented language to enhance its story

Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf opens with its teen hero explaining the events of the 2023 original to refresh players on the science-fiction puzzle platformer’s plot and setting. It’s the only time English is spoken in the game. The rest of the time, Wishfully Studios’ developers build on the game’s eerie mystery by having the characters speak in what co-director Klas Martin Eriksson calls “a gibberish language.”

“The language has grown with the scope of the IP,” Eriksson told Polygon in a video call. “It was an interesting process of evolving the language. You’re jumping between a spreadsheet and a script and tweaking words that sound good or not so good. It’s so much fun. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had.”

The language Lana speaks began with the four commands that she uses to guide her cat-like companion Mui when solving puzzles. But like all aspects of the game, it grew richer in the sequel, which includes more dialogue. Wishfully Studios will be selling a primer for the language in a planned deluxe version of Children of the Leaf, though you don’t need it to follow the conversations. Even though the characters also lack facial features, they manage to convey meaning through tone and body language.

“There’s the old saying, ‘Show, don’t tell,’” Eriksson said. “If you just remove your own ability to tell, then you have no choice but to show. But it also makes you realize quickly, from a directorial point of view, just how many tools we actually do have at our disposal. The music helps tell the story along with the animation team.”

In the original game, Lana discovers the history of the planet Novo and the relationship between the humans and robots there in part through playing notes from composer Takeshi Furukawa’s moody score.

“Music is the universal language,” Eriksson said. “Everyone understands the sour note. If you take the Progeny theme, as we call it, these five notes have a very specific emotion attached to them. Then you jumble them up and make them all corrupted and weird. It tells a story that, at some point, something has gone wrong here and we need to bring balance and harmony back.”

Image: Wishfully Studios

While Eriksson admits that writing without dialogue is often challenging, he also believes that it forces players to focus more.

“The big streaming services encourage writers to put exposition in dialogue way more than they used to, because they know that people are on their phones while they’re watching the show. It just feels like a sad state of affairs if you’re actively catering to that instead of trying to challenge it,” he said. “I’m a firm believer that you can set the stage and say, ‘This is how we’re telling our story, and if you’re here for it, then you need to pay attention, but it is going to pay off.’”

Planet of Lana 2 will release on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch on March 5.