Hands-on with Alto's Adventure - chasing llamas on a snowboard across beautiful mountainsides

Snowman has been quite secretive about Alto's Adventure. Until now.

What we did know is that it's an endless snowboarding game, and that it looks beautiful. Having now had some hands-on time with a beta version of the game I can tell you a lot more.

You play a young snowboarder who sets down the snowy slopes to retrieve their runaway llamas. Each llama you drift past gets you points, so do the shiny gold coins you collect.

A nice touch is the scarf the snowboarder wears. It gets longer the more points you collect, billowing behind you as a colourful, wavy line.

You can also boost your score by performing tricks. You tap to jump, but if you hold your finger on the screen the snowboarder will steadily do a back flip. You'll need to make sure they land on their feet.

You can add grinds and chasm jumps to this, adding more tricks up to get a bigger score so long as you land it. It's easy enough, and feels very smooth while playing, but you do need to keep your eyes open for hazards.

But don't get it wrong, as while you can try to beat your high score and furthest distance reached, this probably won't be what compels you to keep playing Alto's Adventure.

The longer you can survive without a hitting a rock or falling into a chasm, the more a story seems to emerge in the environment.

For example, when you reach a certain distance, you wake up an elder next to a campfire, who then chases you with a stick while riding a llama. If they hit you, the words "Respect your elders" come up, and you have to restart.

It tells you that this snowboarder is part of a community, perhaps a tribe. In fact, given that we're in snowy mountains and there are llamas there, this could be the Himalayas.

I get the feeling more characters and other insights into the setting will be added the further you snowboard down the slopes.

Anyway, there's more. Alto's Adventure has various weather effects, and a working day and night cycle that carries across each replay.

So, you could start at dawn as the sun rises, and fall off at night time when the moon is shining. When you restart, it will still be night time, and eventually the sun will come back up as you ride.

It gives the game world more authenticity as time ticks on no matter how well you're playing. Not to mention, more environments seem to open up after completing goals and reaching new distances.

You'll drift through quiet hillside towns, past lonesome windmills, and through dark forests of huge trees. You can see in the screenshots I've taken that it's a pretty game, and it looks much better in motion.

What has impressed me the most about Alto's Adventure is two things: how easy it is to play, and the sense of adventure.

Many endless games feel repetitive and samey, but Alto's Adventure gives me more gorgeous vistas, new events, and different settings to discover with each replay. That's on top of, you know, chasing a better score.

It's certainly a game to look out for when it arrives on iOS later this week. We'll have a full review soon.