Line Rider

What it is

Line Rider is the browser classic where you draw a line and a tiny figure on a sled rides it. That is the whole premise, and it has been enough to keep people drawing since the 2006 original. The current web version is a full editor with a pencil, a straight-line tool, an eraser, selection, pan and zoom, a flag to mark a start point and a play button to send the rider down whatever you have made.

How to play

Load the page and press play once to see what happens on an empty track, which is not much. Then draw. The pencil makes freehand track, the line tool makes clean straight runs, and the eraser takes mistakes back. Press play, watch the sled cope with your handiwork, stop, adjust, repeat. Keyboard shortcuts exist for every tool, with space for play and pause. There is a load track button for tracks you have saved.

What makes it different

There is no goal, no level and no score, and yet people have spent nearly twenty years building tracks that are closer to short films than to games. The physics is honest: a badly drawn curve throws the rider, a well drawn one carries momentum in a way that feels earned. The web version is actively maintained, and the original creator is still credited on the page.

Why it is on Bored

Sims and Sandboxes is for toys that hand you the tools and get out of the way, and this is the founding example. It runs in the browser with nothing to install, still feels good on a trackpad, and remains one of the few sandboxes where a complete beginner and an obsessive get the same blank page.

Tips

• Start with the straight-line tool, freehand curves are harder than they look
• Use the flag to set a start point so you do not replay the whole track each time
• Zoom out before playing, the rider goes further than you expect
• Learn two shortcuts, play and pause on space and the pencil on q, and the rest follows

FAQ