The original Planet of Lana proposed a science fiction fantasy that appealed on two levels: one, being able to adventure through a wondrously lush exoworld, and two, having a cat who actually listens to you. Planet of Lana 2 is more of the same, on both counts, while adding enough athleticism to its platforming and depth to its puzzling to feel like a worthwhile sequel.

Not that it avoids a slightly odd start. For all the leafy forests, snow-carpeted mountains, and tropical undersea trenches that you’ll eventually see Lana – and feline-ish alien companion Mui – through, game number two begins in a series of grey corridors. It’s here, mind, where Lana reveals she’s been keeping up platforming practice in the intervening years, and is able to sprint, slide, and wall-jump from the off. All simple tricks, but ones that give the physical challenges more of a flowing, dynamic quality than the occasionally sluggish clambering of the original.

Mui, too, is a more helpful blob-buddy. While still needing cursor-pointed direction, they’re no longer limited to waypoints that barely extend beyond Lana’s own arms, thus permitting them to boing around puzzles, gnawing cables and dropping ropes at the very extremes of the screen. Their hypnotic power over the planet’s fauna now extends beyond simple movements and into full player control, adding ink-blasting fish and colonies of sticky, rolling cloud creatures to your solving toolbox.

To accommodate the empowered duo, the puzzles themselves have in turn expanded. Often literally: Planet of Lana steadfastly kept each of its brainteasers to a single screen, but enabled by Mui’s unleashed range and the freely controllable wildlife, many of the sequel’s most memorable puzzles feel massive by comparison. Flying and swimming creatures, especially, lend themselves to sprawling, multi-stage conundrums that have you flicking attention between Lana, Mui, and your captive thrall like the character select screen of an indecisive Street Fighter player.

This is not a complaint. The back-and-forth dance between Lana and Mui was central to the first game’s effectiveness in staving off crate-pushing fatigue, an affliction that can prove fatal to lesser puzzle-platformers. Bigger, more intricate puzzles might have raised the risk of getting stuck and burning out, but the thoughtful, often tactily pleasurable suite of expanded powers and movements turns those scaled-up challenges into some of 2’s most satisfying highlights. You may have already played one of these in the demo: an elaborate infiltration of a submerged cave network, beautifully stitching together well-timed swims (both Lana’s and those of mesmerised fish) with underwater stealth (the coral is patrolled by crackling electric sharks) and management of the aquaphobic Mui.

Not unlike Lana’s squeaking BFF, these helper critters are also invariably cutesy and boopable, in a way that all but guarantees someone on Etsy will be selling stickers of them by the end of the week. This does make it weird, however, when you start marching them to their horrible deaths. Yes, thralls will straight-up perish if steered into hazards, and while this doesn’t reload a checkpoint – as is the case if, say, you send Lana ragolling off a cliff – the infinite resupply of replacements hardly discourages carelessness. In fact, sometimes it’s necessary to beat a puzzle, like hurling those rolling cloud bois into a fire pit to ignite the flammable trail they leave behind. Or using fish as shark bait. Or locking a giant bug in a cage, where it presumably starves to death offscreen. In my playthrough, Lana and Mui slaughtered their friends in all these ways and more. They may be the most prolific serial killer duo since the Wests, and yet the game never addresses, even ironically, their campaign of bloodletting.

In fairness, it’s all for a good cause. Having previously rescued her sister from robots, Lana must now rescue her niece from pollution, the innocent young’un having been poisoned by a mysterious boulder dumped by passing cultists like a radioactive Twix wrapper. This means the bulk of Planet of Lana 2 is framed around an epic fetch quest for cure ingredients, which probably doesn’t sound like the most exciting structure; I know my shoulders sagged when the shopping list first appeared onscreen.

But no – somehow, it works. Chiefly, the unguent hunt serves as an excuse to visit an even broader range of magnificently realised sci-fi biomes and facilities, all gorgeously presented in Planet of Lana’s handpainted style and adroitly scored with a soundtrack of pensive keys, swelling strings, and tense synth. The sequel is also more ambitious in how it uses these backdrops for dramatic setpieces, whether that’s a panicked dash through a burning jungle or the first quiet, suspenseful descent in a stolen submersible, though it ultimately values the original’s adventurous and hopeful atmosphere over action thrills. For every dash from killer bots, there’s at least one serene walk through sunkissed trees or past yet another gawkable vista.

The more segmented approach also opens up the chance for some flashback interludes to inject sweet, sweet Mui lore, illustrating a backstory and relationships that finally start to flesh out the little goober beyond Adorable Sidekick status. This, too, is a shrewd move. Lana and Mui’s friendship is the emotional heart of both games, and instead of just rerunning their original bonding, or wedging in some unlikely conflict betwixt girl and cat alien, these flashbacks subtly tinge it with tragedy: a pained past and conflicting loyalties that Mui, even with a higher degree of sapience than previously thought, can’t communicate to Lana until it’s too late. And not just because both parties speak in gibberish.

Unfortunately, while Planet of Lana 2 is a talented emotion-tweaker at the personal level, I wish it dove deeper into exploring its broader themes. The antagonistic cult, for instance, initially look like the unthinking bearers of some environmental message: they pillage the earth for resources, harmfully dump the waste, and slaughter animals, and not even for constructive reasons like solving a physics puzzle. This initially appears to be teeing up a Hayao Miyazaki-style polemic against our own planet’s ruination (appropriate, given the Spirited Away aesthetic, though less so on the game’s lack of shit-talking your son’s filmmaking abilities). Instead, these portrayals are mainly just shorthand for bastardry, their impact measured almost entirely on how they cause trouble for Lana’s immediate family.

This isn’t the only undercooked idea, either. The shining city, glimpsed in the key art and teased multiple times throughout the game itself? That’s explored properly for about three minutes, most of your time there spent navigating the sewage system and underground warehouses beneath it. Your visit occurs at a point in the story where there isn’t much time for sightseeing, but it’s such a stark departure from the untamed wilds you’re normally exploring – while maintaining the series’ eye-catching presentation standards – that it’s just a shame to leave so quickly.

It’s not quite Bestest Best material, then. But Planet of Lana 2 succeeds far, far more often than it dawdles. Its core puzzle-platforming benefits from some particularly canny mechanical improvements, scoring the unlikely achievement of becoming more complex without stumbling into head-stumping, teeth-grinding difficulty. And, once you escape those cold corridors, it’s even more of an audio-visual treat than the original. Still with, happily, a cat who actually listens to you.

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TL;DR

GoPro issued a going-concern warning after memory prices rose 80-115%. Revenue fell 26%. It’s exploring a sale, a defence pivot, and 23% staff cuts.

GoPro warned on Monday that there is “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.” The action-camera maker reported a 26% revenue decline in Q1 and expects to breach several loan covenants. Shares fell as much as 14%.

The cause is memory. GoPro said its earnings forecast has been “significantly impacted” by an 80% to 115% increase in memory prices. In April, suppliers informed the company of a planned reduction in memory supply that would further reduce forecasted sales. The same DRAM reallocation that is killing the cheap smartphone is now threatening to kill GoPro.

The mechanism is the one we detailed last week. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have redirected wafer capacity from consumer DRAM to high-bandwidth memory for AI data centres. HBM margins run at 70% or higher. Consumer DRAM margins sit between 20% and 30%. The memory makers chose the higher-margin customer. Everyone else pays more or gets less.

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GoPro does not have the purchasing power to absorb the price increase. It is not Apple, which can negotiate quarterly contracts and pass costs onto consumers buying $1,000 phones. It is a sub-$1 billion revenue company whose products sell for $300 to $500 and depend on commodity memory to store high-resolution video. When memory costs double, the product becomes unprofitable.

The company has received waivers from its lender after failing to comply with loan covenants. It does not expect to have enough liquidity to meet obligations if default provisions are triggered and outstanding debt becomes due. It has a $50 million second-lien facility from Farallon Capital Management and a revolving credit facility with Wells Fargo as agent.

GoPro has engaged advisors to evaluate strategic alternatives including a potential sale or merger. It is also exploring opportunities in defence and aerospace for “new markets and product categories.” The company already announced plans to cut 23% of its global staff in April.

The defence pivot echoes Faraday Future’s robotics pivot: a consumer electronics company under financial pressure reaching for a higher-margin, government-funded market where the competitive dynamics are different. Whether GoPro’s ruggedised camera expertise translates into defence contracts is unproven.

The only near-term supply relief is coming from China. ChangXin Memory Technologies’ DRAM has been spotted inside Corsair’s retail DDR5 kits. But CXMT is also planning to convert 20% of its capacity to HBM because the margins are irresistible. The consumer memory shortage is structural, not cyclical.

The memory crisis is visible across consumer electronics. The Asus ROG NUC 16 costs $1,200 more than last year’s model, partly due to DDR5 prices. Dell hiked laptop prices 15-20% in December. Apple agreed to pay Samsung a 100% premium on LPDDR5X for the iPhone. These companies can absorb the cost. GoPro cannot.

GoPro was founded in 2002 by Nicholas Woodman. It went public in 2014 at a $3 billion valuation. The company popularised the action camera category and built a brand that became synonymous with extreme sports and adventure content. Its share price peaked above $90 in 2014. It trades below $1 today.

The going-concern warning makes GoPro the most visible corporate casualty of the AI memory reallocation. It will not be the last. Any consumer electronics company with thin margins, limited purchasing power, and dependence on commodity DRAM is facing the same calculus. The AI boom created enormous wealth for three memory makers and the hyperscalers they supply. GoPro is on the other side of that equation.

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