From Naivety to Nebula: The Unlikely Odyssey of Wishfully Studios

The story of Planet of Lana is a classic narrative of triumph over adversity, but to frame it solely as a success story is to overlook the sheer, staggering naivety that defined its inception. In an industry where developers are routinely cautioned to start with small, manageable projects, the Swedish team at Wishfully Studios took the opposite approach: they dove headlong into a cinematic, high-fidelity adventure that would consume six years of their lives.

For founders Adam Stjärnljus and Klas Martin Eriksson, the journey from advertising film producers to celebrated game developers was paved with hundreds of rejections, years of unpaid labor, and a refusal to abandon a vision that, on paper, had no business succeeding.

The Foundation of a Dream

The seeds of Planet of Lana were sown in 2017, rooted not in complex code, but in a single piece of Photoshop art. The image depicted a girl, Lana, and her feline-like companion, Mui, standing before a monolithic, spider-like machine set against a vibrant, pastoral landscape. It was a visual manifesto inspired by the ethereal aesthetics of Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, combined with the atmospheric, silent storytelling of titles like Another World, Oddworld, and Playdead’s Inside.

At the time, Stjärnljus and Eriksson were running "Makers Only," a Stockholm-based film production company specializing in corporate commercials. While they were professionally successful, they were creatively starving. "In the beginning, it was very exciting doing these commercials," Stjärnljus recalls. "But then as the years passed, it was more and more a job to pay the rent."

Eriksson echoes this sentiment, recalling a moment of clarity while filming an advertisement for a denture adhesive in the Philippines. Surrounded by beautiful scenery but tethered to a mundane product, he realized that if he was going to experience the burnout common in high-pressure creative industries, he wanted it to be for a project he truly believed in. That realization, combined with Stjärnljus’s desire to translate his background in animation and film into interactive media, marked the birth of Wishfully Studios.

Chronology of a "Vertical Slice"

The path to Planet of Lana was anything but linear. In the early days, the team operated with what can only be described as blissful ignorance of the gaming industry’s mechanics.

The Era of Rejection (2017–2019)

The developers initially pitched the game with a demo that consisted of little more than the protagonist walking back and forth. "It felt sluggish," Stjärnljus admitted during a presentation at the Nordic Game conference. "We had a very unrealistic production plan. So we were basically slaughtered by publishers."

They faced hundreds of rejections. Some were polite, others were blunt, but all were demoralizing. During these years, the team worked without salaries. Stjärnljus credits the Swedish social safety net and the support of his family as the only reasons the project survived. They utilized small grants from Swedish game accelerators—not for development, but for the logistics of traveling to conferences to pitch a game that, at the time, lacked a functional gameplay loop.

The Turning Point (2020–2022)

Recognizing that their vision was being hampered by a lack of resources, Stjärnljus and his wife invested their own savings—roughly €20,000—to hire a freelance animator and a part-time programmer. This injection of talent, however modest, allowed them to focus on creating a "vertical slice": a polished, playable segment of the game that captured the final experience’s quality.

Early in 2020, this vertical slice found a champion at Xbox. The team secured an exclusivity deal that provided the necessary capital to scale up production. "They probably had meetings saying, ‘Wait a minute, these guys are quite inexperienced, will they really pull this off?’" Stjärnljus says. "I guess they made a leap of faith." With Xbox’s backing, the studio quickly signed with Thunderful Publishing, signaling the transition from a desperate passion project to a professional production.

The Industry Context: A Saturated Market

The gamble taken by Wishfully Studios becomes even more apparent when looking at the broader landscape of indie development. As 11-Bit Studios’ Chris Wigley noted in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, the platformer genre is notoriously overcrowded.

"If you make a great platformer and it takes off, it can do amazingly well, but there’s so many of them that it’s extremely difficult to stand out," Wigley observed. Wishfully bypassed this by leaning heavily into their filmic background. By prioritizing cinematic framing, emotional pacing, and a score composed by The Last Guardian’s Takeshi Furukawa, they elevated Planet of Lana from a standard puzzle-platformer to an audiovisual experience that captured critical attention.

The success of the 2023 release was immediate. Edge magazine’s 9/10 review—which caused a stir due to a leaked embargo—set the tone for a game that would eventually see successful ports to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and mobile platforms.

Official Responses and Collaborative Spirit

One of the most surprising findings from Wishfully’s journey is the contrast between the film industry and the gaming world. Both founders have expressed a profound appreciation for the culture of game development.

"I really love how unpretentious it is, coming from film," Eriksson notes. "It’s not about ‘cred.’ Game making has to be collaborative by nature. Everyone is so nice."

Stjärnljus agrees, noting that despite entering the industry as outsiders with no prior experience in game design, they were met with mentorship and support rather than gatekeeping. This environment proved essential during the lean years, allowing them to iterate on their design through community feedback and peer support.

The Future: From Pixels to the Silver Screen

The story of Planet of Lana is currently entering its next act: a feature film adaptation. In a move that brings the founders full circle, the project is being developed by Story Kitchen, the production firm responsible for the successful Sonic the Hedgehog films and the Tomb Raider TV series.

With Amber Midthunder slated to star and Pixar veteran Angus MacLane attached to the project, the adaptation is being handled with high-level industry expertise. For Stjärnljus, the collaboration is a testament to the strength of the IP they built from a single Photoshop image. "They get it," he says of the Story Kitchen team. "We feel that it’s really in the right hands."

Implications: The Price of Naivety

The journey of Wishfully Studios serves as a compelling case study for aspiring developers. It challenges the "fail fast" mantra prevalent in Silicon Valley and modern game design, suggesting that sometimes, blind persistence and an uncompromising vision can act as a substitute for experience.

However, the team is quick to emphasize that their success was a product of a specific set of circumstances—social security, family support, and the ability to pivot when the original pitch failed. As Stjärnljus reflects on the nine-year journey from that first sluggish character test to a multi-platform franchise and a Hollywood pitch, he does so with the confidence of someone who has survived the gauntlet.

"We had no idea what we were doing," Eriksson once admitted during the project’s infancy. Looking back, Stjärnljus chuckles at the progress. "Now," he says, "I think we can say that we are experienced."

For the gaming industry, the lesson is clear: while experience is valuable, there remains a place for the naive, the determined, and the dreamers who refuse to be told that their platformer is just another drop in an overcrowded ocean.