The Indie Informer

It’s not often I one hundred percent a game, but I couldn’t help myself with ILA: A Frosty Glide. I rolled credits after just a few hours and wasn’t ready to step out of the frost-tipped world that nevertheless managed to be magically heart-warming. For full transparency, I backed this game when it popped up for crowdfunding and had been following it long before. The extended wait culminated in a satisfying end.

Its narrative hangs in the air like mist — with only a few moments of on-screen demand. Rumaging through secret tunnels and treasure chests nestled behind trees, I discovered the world’s history, and learned along with the main character how to view my own adventure from another perspective. Ila dips into anxieties, fears, and damaging obsessions as deftly as it does on-theme and laugh-inducing references. With all of this swirling around the game’s strongest element: Its gameplay.

Ila is an experience in motion. My heroine’s skatebroom glides over snowbanks, pierces ice sheets, and rockets down winding slopes. Each interconnected but distinct environment holds creative ways to put your skills to the test, along with collectable objects which can increase your wealth, upgrade your fashion, boost your magical abilities, and provide context for the world. Every new environment is a delight to explore, and as I grow more powerful, the layers of each level open up to me.

Though it’s enchanting enough to skim over, the game does have a few technical wrinkles. The one that played most on my nerves was a bug that ensured I could never clear inventory notifications, no matter how hard I tried. Like the other issues I noticed, this didn’t impede my gameplay in any way, but man, was it a pebble in my shoe. Hopefully, that particular issue gets dealt with before most people get to play.

With environmental challenges and enigmatic folds in the landscape to explore, the end of ILA: A Frosty Glide feels earned. I congratulated myself on reaching the mountain tops and, basking in that accomplishment, felt all the more struck by the emotional peak.