With its striking visuals inspired by Studio Ghibli, Planet of Lana is a platforming video game featuring a girl and her cat which achieved positive notices on its release in 2023. Notable to readers of this website is its stirring music composed by Takeshi Furukawa, one of my favourite scores of the year. It starts off with a very Thomas Newman-like main theme in “Progeny” (the kind that Newman himself doesn’t really do any more – orchestral, warm, a whimsical melody) but from there Furukawa engineers a full-blooded orchestral adventure score. The theme briefly appears again at the start of the second cue, “Tailo Village”, before a wonderful, sweeping secondary theme emerges. The pair of themes go on to dominate the score but never in a way that feels repetitive: the composer does a lot with them, and there’s always some standalone set-piece just around the corner.