Today is the day that ILA: A Frosty Glide gets its Steam Next Fest Demo! I was lucky enough to get some hands-on time with the demo before it went up. Please note that I spent most of my time using the Steam Deck, so all my experience is based on that platform.
The Beginning
You begin the game as ILA, as she searches for her missing cat. There is a tutorial that lets you jump around and learn how to glide with your skatebroom. ILA doesn’t use her broom as other witches do; she skates on it. You start with a single jump after using your glide, but you can unlock Stardust in the area that gives you more jumps. These jumps are represented by the small brew icons on the bottom left of the screen.
The game itself controlled well. Jumping and moving were snappy and tight. Sometimes you can overcorrect your trajectory on a glide and butcher the landing. It helps that ILA has a shadow underneath her, but it sometimes goes too fast for me to keep up if you aren’t holding the glide button down. I assumed a bit too often on how far I needed to land before dropping.
Exploration in ILA: A Frosty Glide is a joy. There are a bunch of chests in hard-to-reach places all around this magical island. You will need to time your glide, jumps, and bursts to perfect movement. It feels satisfying to use the ice to jump to higher locations. You can also find secret rooms that might have chests or even cosmetics to use on ILA as she skates around the mountain.
Not All Is Well In The Island
ILA: A Frosty Glide has a PlayStation 1 polygon aesthetic in its art design and game design. It is a good vibe and ultimately suits the playstyle well. You would think that with this aesthetic that it would suit the Steam Deck. You would be correct, but there is a caveat. The game defaults to a graphics mode that can churn to 30 FPS at certain locations on the magical island. To get the best playability, you want to switch it to Performance mode in the settings. Then it was at a good 70 – 80 FPS most of the time and dropped to around 60 FPS at the bigger areas.
The camera in most locations can be rotated in any direction. However, sometimes the camera will get stuck behind the background or just get stuck at certain areas, which can mess with your momentum. There is some good QA work in this situation, though, since if the camera gets stuck in a location and ILA is about to move behind a mountain, it will make the mountain transparent so you can still see where ILA is and move her out of any situation that would hamper the momentum completely.
My Verdict
I do think ILA: A Frosty Glide is a worthwhile demo to try out. Exploring the crevices and finding the hidden spots in this magical island was a real treat. There are some issues with the camera, which adds even more credence to the PlayStation 1 aesthetic. I think having some more settings to change could optimize the game better for the Steam Deck, but the performance mode is a decent mode for playing the game on that platform.
ILA: A Frosty Glide will get a Steam Next Fest Demo you can try in an hour.
