Line Racer, a follow-up title to Line Rider, has been released by Sparkworkz and is now available in the app store. For those who are unfamiliar with the game, Line Rider was a popular flash app that was basically a track editor for a little dude on a sled. You would draw a track for him to follow and then test it out, utilizing a pretty nice physics engine that required you to land jumps perfectly, or wipe out spectacularly. Line Racer expands on this concept by giving you control over the sledding dude, as well as pitting you against other racers in an online multiplayer mode.
There really isn’t much to the app other than that. There is an offline Time Trial mode, where you can race against 3 AI-controlled sledders on 4 pre-built tracks. After a few efforts on each, we were able to post top scores pretty easily. Instead of racing on those four tracks, we can also race on randomly-generated tracks, though these seemed much shorter and less complex than the other four. There is also an option to play online tracks or to create our own tracks, which is probably one of the leading reasons to pick up the game. The editor looks very similar to the one from Line Rider, with multiple track types and simple tools to create and test your track.
The biggest draw of the game is the multiplayer functionality. Unfortunately, we were unable to test this out as we were unable to find any other players to race against. This is likely because the game is fairly new and has yet to garner the kind of following that multiplayer games require. The graphics are pretty decent, albeit a bit on the small side. There is funky soundtrack and a few sound effects here and there. The controls are simple. A green arrow can be held to speed up the racer, while a red arrow slows him down. Tilting the device causes the racer to adjust his attitude, allowing for flips or simple corrections that make the difference between crashing and sailing to victory. The controls work fairly well, with the exception of the shake to reset function. It requires some significant shaking to actually trigger a reset and there appears to be some sort of delay, too. We’d much rather have a button or screen tap instead. Some type of sensitivity option would also have been useful, as slight tilts of the device often result in pretty big attitude changes.
There are a few options for character customization, though the actual racer is so small that it doesn’t really make much difference. You can also turn off accelerometer controls and use touch instead. There is even an option to listen to music from your own collection instead of the in-game music. Replay value will be good if a community of riders ever forms. At this point, it is limited to the fun you can have with the track editor. Line Racer is $1.99, a fair price given its potential. However, having failed to realize that potential as-yet, Line Racer is currently a 3-Dimple game with the ability to improve in the near future.
Line Racer gets our AppSmile 3-Dimple rating:
