Last updated on January 15th, 2026 at 11:19 pm
Laya's Horizon – Action Game Review
Laya's Horizon is a Action/Adventure game from Netflix, Inc., first launched in 2nd May 2023.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 171+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Laya's Horizon Stand Out
Available exclusively for Netflix members.
“It’s one of the best games to hit Netflix’s fledgling gaming service to date.” — The Verge
“An engaging, cozy and responsive experience” — Engadget
“It’s as close to perfect as a mobile game gets” — Esquire
“A truly magical experience” — TouchArcade
Master the art of flying. Dive off mountains, weave across forests and glide over rivers to unlock new abilities as you explore a vast, peaceful world.
Use the ancient power of the Windfolk's enchanted capes to hone your skills, take on challenges and fly through obstacle courses that will make your heart soar. Explore an expansive island in this open-world adventure inspired by wingsuit flying.
Features:
• Flying at your fingertips: Inspired by the real-world sport of wingsuit flying, the position of Laya's arms change the shape of her cape just like a bird's wings. Move your thumbs independently or together to steer, boost, rise and dive using intuitive controls.
• Endless exploration: Cut through the air in high-speed races and try not to crash as you carefully maneuver through challenging obstacle courses. If you're in the mood for a relaxing adventure, simply enjoy the beauty of the island and fly without a goal.
• Complete challenges, upgrade your skills: This game is filled with more than 50 exciting missions from many characters, over 40 challenge levels and more than 100 collectables to keep you flying. Unlock capes and charms to help boost your abilities.
• High risk, high reward: Power your flight by flying boldly. Fly close to everything — from hot air balloons to snowy slopes. This will allow you to absorb the island's energy and keep flying fast. If you feel a drop in energy, simply dip low and close to your environment to collect sparks and boost.
• Find your own way to fly: Discover a unique set of flying abilities as you unlock enchanted capes and charms on your journey. Try out different equipment combinations to increase boost speeds, conserve energy and improve maneuverability.
• Get lost in beautiful horizons: From the winding rivers of the Highlands to the towering rock formations of Stone Forest, each patch of terrain offers a distinct flying experience. Weave through narrow caves filled with ancient ruins, skim over massive waves, dodge raging geysers and so much more.
• Meet interactive characters: An eclectic group of people, the Windfolk are as diverse as the land they live on, which makes meeting them as interesting as discovering the island itself.
• Exclusive music and calming design: Original music and handcrafted audio welcome you into the world of the Windfolk. Adaptive audio matches the movement and intensity of your flying for a totally immersive experience. Enjoy an orchestral score that provides the perfect ambience to your flight and environment.
• An improved gamepad experience: We’ve added gamepad support to most menus. Settings and full map control coming soon.
- Created by Snowman.
This Action game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Laya's Horizon is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 30th October 2024
Recent improvements include:
We've squashed bugs and made behind-the-scenes improvements to bring Netflix members the best possible gameplay experience.
Download & Availability
Laya's Horizon is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Laya's Horizon on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone XS / iPhone XS Max / iPhone XR / iPad Pro (3rd Gen, 12.9-inch, Wi-Fi) / iPad Pro (3rd Gen, 11-inch, Wi-Fi) / iPad Pro (3rd Gen, 12.9-inch, Cellular) / iPad Pro (3rd Gen, 11-inch, Cellular) / iPad Mini (5th Gen) / iPad Mini (5th Gen, Cellular) / iPad Air (3rd Gen) or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We downloaded this game on a whim, and it was one of the luckiest things Ive done this year. This game is perfection without a controller; but with a controller, its perfection with a cherry on top! The environments, the music, the whimsical characters, and minimal narration all combine into an immersive and smile inducing experience that shouldnt be missed. We hope to see this game ported into virtual reality or something soon.
We really enjoy this game but Ive now completed it 100 percent so we have nothing left to do. Please make a second or add to this one.
How does it only have a hundred or so reviews? This thing is a classic.
Most flying games have a lot of problems with the flying mechanics and not having a very explorative map but this game does everything good that you would expect from a game. It just takes time for you to get used to it but after u get done with all the quests from all of the people, It can get boring and may even get tiring at points going around the map. But this game does everything right so its a solid game if you like a explorative and interesting game.
Im a ChineseI cant play this game in our country.
Controls are overly complicated. We get that they were trying to mimic where the glider's hands are with your finger's positions on the screen, but they ended up really clunky. We stopped playing after about 15 minutes because once we got the hang of the controls, we discovered we couldn't do 2 things at once, such as turn while climbing or turn while diving or turn while boosting or turn while boosting. The natural comparison would be Sky: Children of Light, but we found the controls so poorly thought out that they reminded us of the original Mario Cart. Don't get us wrong, it's totally playable, but it's not intuitive, and it's definitely not seamless. Graphics are choppy like N64, and there didn't seem to be a cute artsy reason for it. We didn't play long enough to find out if there is a story or bigger goal to the whole game, but it seemed to be centered around completing challenges, which is fine.
Im usually a fan of other types of games but this one is just so well designed and keeps us wanting to play it more and more. We recommend it if youre wanting something super fun that you can pick up whenever.
Im only halfway through, and we already want to delete our progress just to go through it all again!!!! Do note, having a nice wide screen is pretty handy for this one.
Ive played this game for days now and we never do that. Im having a great time playing this and listening to tunes.
This game is amazing and is running on a very good idea. The only thing that needs improvement are the controls. Sometimes we feel like theyre not sensitive enough and sometimes they just dont respond at all. If Im the only one having this problem, then maybe its just our phone, but a solution to the sensitivity is having an option in settings to adjust how sensitive the controls are. All around Great game! Keep improving.
Overall we like the game, but for some reason it wont let us fly through the windwills no matter how much we fly through them. Please fix it.
This game is now officially one of the best games Ive played (console included). This game is very relaxing makes time fly by and its just great to play in your free time. You will be mildly tuning your instincts and steadiness at the same time as you proceed further in the game, while enjoying amazing visual aesthetics.
Its excellent work, worthy successor to the Alto games.
This game brings all of the fun, relaxation, challenge, and beauty of Snowmans Alto games into three dimensions. We love this game as a way to kill time and destress. Its fun to play even when Im not attempting to complete any challenges or achieve any goals. Just gliding around the island without any particular purpose is enjoyable. Ive encountered a few minor bugs. We once finished a race in first place by .03 seconds and the challenge didnt get marked complete. Another time we collected 18 smoke rings on a Collect 20 to win challenge, and it DID get marked complete. These are trivial, though, and rare. They dont meaningfully detract from the game.
Game is amazing from the graphics to activities to just the hours of entertainment , our only complaint is it seems to be a bug in the game – whenever you are in a race and you and the other races jump off to start you dont have control over your character until 2-3 seconds after the race starts leading to you to have to pick up from dead last , not sure if this is just us or not but anyways heres to hoping it gets fixed.
Based on all of the glowing reviews, we expected this game to be better than sliced toast with butter and jam. And honestly, we really hoped it would be. But upon playing it, for a while now, Im left feeling mostly meh. Dont get us wrong it has some value. And the gameplay is initially kind of fun. But This game looks like a direct rip off of an oooold game called Glyder by gluGames. As a matter of fact this game was the first result when we recently went looking for another game like it, as it no longer works with a modern iOS. That game was really fun to play, with actual challenges and a point to playing, or to even just fly around for the pure joy of it. The ui was quite intuitive and provided a great deal of information without being intrusive or overbearing. The controls were simple and very natural, yet allowed for complex and exciting maneuvers that made the whole experience even more fun. The graphics were charming in their own way, only limited by the hardware and software of the time. The gameplay was complex without being complicated. In other words a gem. This game on the other hand is kind of a mess and completely uninspired. The ui is janky and not very reactive. The relationship between movement and what actually happens on the screen is more like an interactive movie and not so much a flying game. The challenges are little more than the same milk runs over and over and over again. The graphics are laughable at best being bland, neutered, and a 90s style polygonal hodgepodge. But they make up for that by having it be huge in size and demanding in resources, and its like, really? Thats what swinging Netflix kind of cash $$$ around gets you? Really? And this was on a new iPhone 15. God help you if youre on a 13 or <gasp> a 12. Overall the game play, beyond the initial hour or so, is dull, tedious, and bordering on annoying. The controls are not at all fun if you just want to fly around or to do any so-called missions, and end up being clumsy and weirdly unresponsive. The missions are mostly laughable and pointless and ridiculous, not to mention repetitive. There is near zero sense of discovery, although they try really hard to make it look like there is. And despite our having a genuine desire for a game like this, and while having no actual replacement, Im deleting it because by now its as exciting as watching paint mold.
Im honestly shocked that this is a mobile game. Mobile games are often known for their absurd in-app purchases, low-quality designs, and just general corporateness. Here we have a game that holds up not just as a mobile game, but as a game in general. There is a massive world to explore, with unique controls and characters with actual personality. You could try to complete all of the quests, collect sparks and do crazy stunts, gather a large photo album, or fill out the entire map. There is a ton of content to check out, and the fact that all you need to play is a Netflix subscription is shocking given the quality. Kudos to the devs for creating another great game. One issue: for some reason, the recent update causes the game to crash when you open your photo album. Is that just us.
Game crashes when we try to access the new snapshot collection menu.
Reminiscent of the classic, sadly gone game Glyder, this is just lovely. Fly around, do challenges or not, no stress.
With such amazing games like this one! We play with a DualSense controller attached to our phone. It works really well. Graphics, gameplay, sound everything is amazing. And the best part its included in Netflix subscription which we already have anyway! We wish more people discovered Netflix gaming, its great. There is some shader compilation stutter during the cutscenes, even on iPhone 14 Pro Max. The gameplay looks fine, though. Hopefully this is being fixed in future patches.
And world is a nice place to spend time in.
We really enjoy this game, but we really dislike that we have to subscribe to Netflix to play the game. We subscribed to check the game out and leave a review, but Im not going to be continuing our subscription and am sad we wont be able to play the game any longer as a result. Its like a weird paywall. We get it that there are games that require an Apple Arcade subscription to play, and thats a similar thing, but $16+/month is really high. Id rather pay for a game from a developer or play a free game and/or choose to make in-app purchases to support the developer of the game. Im simply just not gonna subscribe to Netflix regularly.
Ive had a blast with this game, but Im unable to capture the last dashwing because it despawns whenever we get close to it, we hope this gets fixed but otherwise super polished and very fun.
Love this game. Im trying to catch our lash bird, but it keeps fading away before we even start the chase. It blinks until we get 200m away from it and then just goes away.
Loved every minute of this game. Its great for blowing time, while relaxing and having zero stress. We will say, it is a little difficult finding landmarks, as there isnt any sort of direction leading you to new landmarks. Blue Triples and Dashwings are easy once you get the upgraded Bird Whistle Charm, but landmarks and landing points are difficult to find without knowing the map well. At this point, Ive heated the game 99%, all we have left is to finish the Dashwing challenge with Skye, but that cant be done until the last Dashwing can be captured. Problem is, the last Dashwing we have left is in Capital Cliffs, and its glitched. As you start to fly toward it, the directional icon disappears and eventually the bird itself goes away as you get closer. Ive come from every angle wearing every cape/charm combo (not easy) and still havent managed to catch it, so its definitely a bug that needs to be patched. We would love to finish that challenge! Anyway, other than a few bug fixes, the game is awesome, and would love for more content to be added! Cant wait for future update. 10/10 would recommend lol.
Fun game, hi really enjoy the animations, sounds and gameplay. The one issue Ive found is a bug where one of the dash wings by by the capital cliffs disappears as we approach it. It is visible and we can see the little cal animation, but as we approach it it instantly disappears and Im not able to catch it. Otherwise super fun game.
Layas is visually beautiful. It reminds us of Sky: Children of the Light with the crazy graphics and flying functions. Honestly super impressive for a Netflix collaborated game.
Love this game and it definitely deserves 5 stars except for one glaring bug. None of our visited locations appear yellow on the map so we cant tell what Ive visited already or not. This is particularly a problem for Divewings since we dont know which ones we havent caught yet.
We really love this world, the graphics, the flying challenges and the flying! Our avatars have flown in other games but this gliding experience is new and a fun challenge. We were frustrated that the map only has landmarks for major landing platforms and for the various races and challenges. But once you fly somewhere its not put on the map so you have to remember when you get a challenge to go do something in a specific area. We have a bad memory and a terrible sense of direction. But with practice and repetition we got better in knowing where things were but it took us a while. We love most of this game but the thing we hate are the controls to flying. They use airplane control directions. Meaning up is down and down is up. It took us a long time to get used to that as youre not flying a plane, youre gliding so imo it should be pull wings/arms in for down and out for gliding or ascent. But the worst part is when the phone heats up or we heat up, our fingers no longer seem to be recognized by the control. The reaction time is slow too. One race we cant dive until way after the other competitors and we lose valuable time and control trying to dive down to follow the path to the end. And our heart races and we get frustrated and have to take a break before we throw our phone across the room. Otherwise we love this game and will be sad when we finish everything and theres no new areas to explore or new challenges to try.
Great game but need to fix the disappearing dash wing.
The game is great but Im stuck at 99% because of the disappearing dash wing in capital cliffs! Seeing lots of others experiencing the same thing. Please fix.
The game is a lot of fun, but it definitely has at least one major bug, at least for completionists. A dashwing in Capital Cliffs just disappears when you get anywhere close (the one above the Highland Wall lookout point). Thats been bugging us. Otherwise its an amazing game.
In all honesty, this is a bad version of the game Sky: Children of the Light by That Game Company. Dont support this company by downloading the app, download the real, free version that you dont need a netflix account for. It has much better graphics and controls.
Im sure it would be a fine game but put some kind of disclaimer that you need a Netflix account.
We love this game, but it would feel so much better with controller support. Being that its our only complaint should tell you how incredible this game is.
If we could give this ten stars we would. This is genuinely the best game we have ever played on our phone, and we probably the best game in the apple app store. The graphics are beautiful and stunning, the game mechanics are simple to use without being boring, the challenging are challenging without being tedious or frustrating, creating an incredibly enjoyable experience. Truly incredible.
Relaxing and beautiful pickup and play game. The controls are easy to pickup yet leave room to master. Brilliantly done and absolutely worth playing for free with your Netflix account membership.
Loads of fun that would only be made better by playing on the big screen with a controller.
Awesome game from an awesome developer! Can definitely see the hints of Altos games sprinkled in there and it is superb. Controls take a little to get used to but we put the invert option on and it made it much easier (for us). Had the hang of it in no time. We do think the option to tap left/right to turn and then drag left/right for sharp turns would be a little easier though. All in all great experience..cant wait to complete more missions and unlock more trinkets/capes.
This game is marvelously immersive. Love the layout and the discovery aspect. The user interface is wonderful. The challenges increase and the difficulty ramps up appropriately. We are really enjoying it. Im currently a bit stuck on level 23 with the ruined houses in the dead Forrest .and Ive only had it less than 24 hoursEnjoy.
Ive only been playing for about an hour but felt compelled to write a review. This game is a gem. The controls are intuitive but also not too easy which makes the game feel fun and rewarding. The music and graphics are also both great. If you have a Netflix subscription, then we would highly recommend checking this one out.
It has beautiful views and keeps you calm. We would love to try something like this in real life.
Phones have been getting more and more powerful processors in them, with their full potential for video games having not been used. Older classic mobile games have continued to dominate the mobile market, but looks like Netflix took the initiative to bring a more complete open world game to market and push whats possible in mobile gaming.
Its a lotta skill challenges related to the flight mechanic. It meanders a bit, but thats baked into this style of game. If you like the Pilot Wings games this is pretty decent.
The flying controls and boost design is so good. It looks incredible. But this game would SING at 60 FPS. Steering accurately would be so much easier. Please add a toggle for this.
Theres no story to the game. Unfortunately, the wonderful gameplay, amazing UI, and huge map are not put to good use, because there is no drama or any type of underlying narrative. Eventually you get bored flying around, racing, and discovering new sectors. It would be fun to race other people on mobile. Love the feel of the game, and the learning process.
The game is great but we need to experience it on a bigger screen than our iPad. In fact now that we think about it none of Netflix games are on Apple TV, smh.
Love snowman, Netflix login gets us to choose our user and then kicks back to login screen so cant play.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.8
- Size: 537.25 MB
- iOS: 16.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, KO, PL, PT, ZH, ES, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Netflix, Inc.]()
Last updated: 30th October 2024 | Genre: Action, Adventure | Developer: Netflix, Inc.