The infuriatingly addictive Line Rider, which since it was first seen via website deviantART as a free Flash-made interactive ‘toy’ on the PC in 2006 has become an internet phenomenon, is now to be released on Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS in Spring 2008.
One of the many highly acclaimed Youtube videos showing Line Rider in action
It is easy to say that the best thing about this game is its simplicity, after all, all that the player needs to do is draw a series of lines for the “dude†to sled down. However, getting the lines in the right place to ensure the little bob-hatted character does not crash and burn on one of your ambitious vertical creations is itself an exercise in advanced geometry.
The new version of the game will make some additions to the old minimalist style, including tools for drawing straighter lines and additional graphics. There will also be add-ons allowing for some puzzle game play. However, the core of the game will stick close to its creator’s initial concept of the game as a ‘toy’ – something which players can while away the rainy hours tinkering with, perfecting the ultimate loop-the-loop round the inside of a volcano or a shark’s eyeball, wherever fancy and imagination lead.
Line Rider (Beta) Title Screen
The original game was developed by Boštjan Cadež, a Slovenian university student, as an illustration class project and has now given rise to over 23,000 YouTube videos, varying from the simple to the astoundingly intricate. The comments posted on these videos are an interesting reflection of the status of game play in society.
Whereas in a pure artistic context, the diligence and time labour invested in the graphics on some of these videos would be acclaimed, the reaction of a substantial number of viewers here is just to ask, “don’t you have anything better to do with your time?†And yet, videos made by Tech Dawg, who is perhaps the most renowned of these artistic “geeksâ€Â, have had up to seven times more viewings than there were visitors to London’s Tate Britain gallery in the whole of 2006.
It is interesting to ponder on how far society still has to travel before it will find itself more at ease with the variety of new means of artistic expression which have come into being in the last twenty years.
Youtube video of a Line Rider track by Techdawg that has been viewed over 3 million times on Youtube alone
As for Tech Dawg himself, readers may be interested to learn that he has by his own admission now gained full-time employment with inXile Entertainment, the production house responsible for bringing the game to the DS and Wii.
You can review some of his videos in hi-res, as well as getting to grips with the game itself, here: http://linerider.com/
