A cozy adventure and a frantic shooter
GDC 2025 was held in San Francisco last week, and First Break Labs was there to show off their upcoming releases. Pure Nintendo wasn’t on hand for a visit, but we did hop onto Discord for a demo of two games they’ll be sending our way: ILA: A Frosty Guide and Baseless.
Developed by Barcelona-based Magic Rain Studios, ILA: A Frosty Glide is an open world adventure with a very cozy approach to gameplay. You play a young woman, ILA, who has lost her kitten, Coco. Luckily, ILA is a witch-in-training, so she has some skills at her disposal as she sets out to rescue her lost cat. Even luckier that some of those skills happen to involve a skatebroom.
Focusing on cozy exploration, players will acquire new acquire new skills for ILA as she explores the environment. These skills will unlock access to new areas, allowing her to work her way to the summit.
Of course, there are numerous collectibles to be obtained, too, including hats, capes, and customized skatebrooms. And as ILA progresses, story elements will unveil the history of her relationship with Coco.
I was able to observe a nice chunk of gameplay, and was struck by how the game’s color palette and soundtrack (composed by Joaquim Scandurra (Sku)) help to set the comfortable vibe. ILA: A Frosty Vibe is more adventure and discovery than action, encouraging players to take everything in as they work their way through. You can’t die, although some of the environmental puzzles appear to offer a decent challenge.
ILA: A Frosty Glide is coming to Switch and other platforms in Q3 of this year.
The second game I observed was Baseless from Fermenter Games, an individual developer from New York. This one is a twin-stick shooter in which you must shoot to move. Sound challenging? That would definitely appear to be the case.
In Baseless, players will use their weapons to propel them in the opposite direction, hopping from planet to planet and taking out enemies while doing so. Gravity will affect players from all directions, but you’ll need to use your weapons to prevent yourself from drifting dangerously far from…the danger. Many enemies will need to be wiped out (or other objectives completed) in order to advance.
Thankfully, though, the weapons are powerful, and there are friends to adopt along the way.
Like ILA, Baseless also has a cozy color palette. The action, however is anything but cozy. The demo was frenetic, but I could tell from some of the slicker moves that mastering the controls and the available weaponry will be quite rewarding.
And those colors! Baseless should be quite the looker on your OLED Switch or TV screen when it arrives in Q3 2025.
We’d like to thank First Break Labs for taking the time to lead us through these two games, and we look forward to exploring them further as we await their release. In the meantime, you can learn more about ILA: A Frosty Glide and Baseless, along with First Break Labs’ other published titles, at firstbreaklabs.com.
