Game Reviews

The Line

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The Line
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Back before you could play wondrous games on your mobile phone – in fact, before any non-yuppy even had a mobile phone – kids had to content themselves with other forms of entertainment on long journeys.

The thing that always occupied me in those pre-Game Boy years were join-the-dot books. From a seemingly random formation of numbered dots sprung stunning (well, decipherable) drawings of animals and deserted islands.

Things have come almost full circle now with The Line, a new line-drawing game set in a join-the-dots universe.

Join the dots

The purpose of joining dots here is not to create a picture, but to serve as locomotion for a creature who lives within them.

Eddy, as he’s called, shows himself as little more than a bulge in these straight lines, with a couple of hastily doodled eyes, a mouth, and what looks like a palm tree on his head. He moves of his own accord along each stretch of line, switching back on the opposite side when he reaches a dead end.

It’s up to you to extend these tracks, swiping between points and deleting sections to create new avenues. You can hurry Eddy along or hold him up for a few seconds by tapping the fire and ice icons respectively.

The goal in each level is to reach the exit, which only becomes active once you’ve collected a set number of orbs. Once you’ve diverted Eddy to collect enough of these glowing items you can either head directly for the exit or sweep around to pick up the last few orbs for a perfect rating.

A little sketchy

The dangers for a line-creature are plentiful, ranging from red squiggly lines that melt you on contact to spiky mines that detonate when touched. Bypassing these obstacles is the game's main challenge, yet they also represent a major shortcoming.

You need to makes use of the aforementioned ice command too frequently to negotiate these hazards. Without the ability to zoom out, it’s tough to see enough to stay ahead of Eddy as he moves forward, and so you increasingly rely on slowing him down using ice.

Furthermore, Eddy’s lurching motion, which drags the view along in the same fashion, can make drawing paths tricky, resulting in frustrating deaths as you fail to connect a line to safety.

Hence, the only way to make reliable progress is to keep hammering the 'freeze' button. It’s a legitimate tactic, but it frequently gives the game a fun-sapping staccato pace.

Walk the line

A less frequent but equally galling issue is when Eddy makes bizarre, unpredictable course changes. This tends to happen when numerous paths intersect, serving to confuse Eddy’s path-finding AI.

Allied to the difficulties highlighted above, such failings make you approach each level with too much caution.

It's a pity, as The Line introduces an original universe with plenty of potential. When it works – usually on the simpler levels that rely less on reactions and avoid moving up and down too much – it's good fun. It’s just a shame that walking the line is such a problem for this particular hero.

The Line

While The Line offers original join-the-dots line-drawing gameplay that's fun in patches, frustrating movement and control issues spoil the flow of play
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.