October 2024 Line Rider Roundup
Well, I’m back, after exactly 12 roundups. A one-year sabbatical, if you will. Hopefully you enjoyed reading these roundups with Jade and then September as lead reviewers over the past year. When I quit, I had no idea if this roundup would continue at all, and if it did continue how long it would last, and if it did last if I would ever come back, but it seems it does still exist, and I feel like writing reviews again. So, I think I might be back for a while, at least until someone else expresses any interest in taking over. I am by no means attached to this position as lead roundup reviewer here at Line Rider Review HQ, and I don’t know how long I’ll want to keep doing it this time around either, but for now, it feels worth doing. So, at least for the time being, it’ll probably be best to submit any guest reviews to me rather than sending them to September. (Thanks to MoonXplorer and Autumn for submitting reviews this month, and September for staying on and writing a few herself!)
I’ve mostly preoccupied myself with normal human things during this past year - getting fired from a job for political reasons, struggling with my creative pursuits, falling in queer polyamorous love, finally getting my own studio apartment, getting my heart broken, working more than is probably healthy to cope with the heartbreak, and feeling an upsettingly wide range of emotions through it all. I’ve basically been playing the hits. I am sorry to inform you that I am returning as an even more aged, bitter, sad, jaded, haggard denizen of the Line Rider corner of the internet, but I’d like to think that I’m also a little kinder, a little gentler, and a little less rigid. Going forward, I don’t think I’m going to be able to promise positivity, but I’m also not going back to judging tracks with thumbs-down emojis, which hopefully we can all appreciate. I don’t think I quite know what this next era of monthly roundups will hold, but I want to do my best to make peace with imperfection. Some reviews might be short, some might be long. I might be really excited about a track or really upset by a track for reasons that are weird or personal or difficult to articulate, and I might not always be able to explain it. I might even choose not to explain how I feel sometimes. Things might vary from month to month based on how I’m doing outside of Line Rider. Basically, I want to give myself permission to be a bit more fluid with this whole thing - to figure out what I want to say on a per-month basis. Let’s find out togather, shall we? Feedback is not only welcome but encouraged, so don’t hesitate.
Click here for a playlist of all videos in this roundup (in order), with the exception of Bosh Bosh oo ee oo which is only on Bilibili. Titles also link to videos individually.
My red little fox - Branches / Jade
Review by September:
It’s a bit of a shame this review is going to come out in December, because My red little fox is perhaps one of the most autumnal Line Rider tracks ever created. This is, of course, in large part due to Branches’ impressive command of color and evocative drawings of fall plants and animals—but it goes deeper than that, into those late fall feelings which bury themselves into a particularly seasonal kind of heart and mind.
My red little fox starts, at first, with one color—a deep red—and slowly builds those colors out into blue, and then green, and then an entire rainbow of rich, dark hues. It’s a range of shades I haven’t really seen anywhere else in Line Rider, which I can only really describe as “stained-glass-esque,” like we are in a church at sundown or on a stormy day. But Jade does not stop at the these colors, but chooses to arrange them and combine them in increasingly complex forms—first, as spatially-arrange solid blocks of color, then as smaller and smaller interweaving stripes and splotches, and then a more representational arrangement of color fields, full of abstract plants and animals. Finally, the colors begin to blend together… and, as it seems the track might end, the camera begins to pan and we follow a new (fox-colored) rider as they sled through a more fully representational scene, finned with a wide variety of visual minutiae that feel as though they take on a sort of realism in juxtaposition to the abstraction that came before. Despite this sense of realism, this fully-detailed section still shares the abstract color identity with what came before—remixing the colors of the sky, the ground into a satisfying color palette which gives it that extra oomph. And I think this concept is worth highlighting, given that, in the few years since color has been added to .com, we’ve seen a whole lot of blue sky + green ground tracks—which are often fine, of course, but we Line Rider creators can do so much more, using non-literal colors to create evocative palettes and thereby more varied emotional landscapes (note: this is an important point I stole from my visual artist friend. Thanks, Jamie!). And as always, Jade’s capacity for movement and music sync is always a delectable treat.
Is it odd I find something not just literally autumnal, but metaphorically autumnal about the progression of this track? Yes, yes, there’s the fall elements, but more than that, the gradual coming-into-focus journey that My red little fox has a narrative beat that echoes very rhythms of that season. First, it’s just green leaves, then, one by one, you notice certain leaves turn red, then it’s certain trees, and before you know it, you’re looking at a whole dazzling display of of yellows and oranges and reds—and then, suddenly, it’s all gone, and you’re in the barren-ness of winter, much like the dark and abstract ending at the end of this track. Fall is a special season because it’s one with a whole narrative arc.
And can’t friendships, too, feel autumnal? As always, social connection drives Jade’s best work, and My red little fox is no exception. The track is synced to a cover of the Sufjan Stevens’ song of the same name by one of Jade’s friends external to the line rider community, for pete’s sake! Perhaps some of the best, most special friendships are the ones that take on these fall-like arcs of connection—you notice each other, spend more time together, and that time grows into a period of closeness and connection with another, until time or circumstances bring that connection into a hibernative, winter-like status. And yes, I did just make up the word “hibernative”—what of it? But yeah. Oftentimes these kinds of connections simply vanish, never to be seen again, but the very best Pumpkin Spice friendships are the ones that, like fall itself, come back in cycles, year after year after year. If I was to give my Literary Analysis of My red little fox, I would say it’s a track that celebrates the specialness of those kinds of relationships.
Even in a relatively slow year for her, Jade continues to be a singular force within the Line Rider community. Her command of color, expressive movement, and evocative symbolism solely her own—and, when she puts her mind into a full project like “My red little fox, it makes for tracks which feel indispensable for the present Line Rider landscape.
We Never Change - MoonXplorer
[cw: suicide, abuse]
Review by Autumn:
I was at first a bit nervous when I was getting into my first watch of MoonXplorer’s We Never Change, due to the lyrics of the song itself. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Coldplay song and love most of the lyrics in it, but I was always a bit bothered by the lyrics of the chorus, which goes, “We never change, do we? No, no. We never learn, do we?” I know there’s probably a deeper meaning that Chris Martin was trying to give here, but I can’t help but take it literally, because...PEOPLE CHANGE!!! A LOT!!! THAT’S WHAT MAKES US HUMAN!!! Which is why I’m so glad that MoonXplorer spun it around and changed into something different.
At first, We Never Change is a good ol’ lyric track with some simple but cool (and a little childlike) visuals, but things take a turn when the bridge of the song shows up. In that portion, MoonXplorer drops the lyric video trope and gives us a bundle of cruel remarks seemingly coming from past friendships of MoonXplorer that reaches a point of telling them to commit suicide. Afterwards, MoonXplorer gives us what’s essentially the message of the track, which is about how we should give room for people to change if they hold regret for a mistake they’ve committed.
I know next to nothing about MoonXplorer’s life, but if I had to guess what happened according to the bridge and ending of We Never Change is that MoonXplorer has probably done something that has hurt what are supposedly their friends and as a response, those “friends” had hurt MoonXplorer back with those cruel remarks MoonXplorer wrote out in the track. I know it’s a bit weird to take a guess on what happened in someone else’s life without knowing them that much, but I’m writing this out because it’s something I can relate with... Well, sorta??? Let me explain.
You see, there have been a few mistakes I’ve made in my life that range from “it probably had hurt a person I care about” to “okay, it DEFINITELY had hurt people I care about”. However, one thing that’s different from what MoonXplorer has shown is that instead of several people making cruel remarks back as some sort of revenge-filled response, there was always this one person who was saying some of those cruel remarks, and that person was myself. ...Yeah yeah, I know it’s a bit different from what MoonXplorer expressed, but some of the stuff MoonXplorer wrote out has deeply affected me. It wasn’t any of those suicidal remarks that I’ve said to myself (thankfully), it was the stuff like “you’ll always be the same”, “fuck you”, “grow up”, and “you simply don’t care”. Things like that really demotivated me from trying to change, and I’m pretty sure those cruel remarks MoonXplorer wrote out demotivated them from changing (thankfully, that didn’t last forever). I’m glad that MoonXplorer changed, and I’m happy that I’ve changed as well.
To put it simply, this is a simple but impactful little track with an important meaning, like, let people change! Most of the mistakes people have committed are completely redeemable. Taking spiteful revenge is virtually never the correct answer to respond with, especially with those cruel remarks that’s in We Never Change. Like, you can give yourself some distance, maybe even drop them as a friend, or even make meaningful art about how you should treat your friends right, but please...let them change. We are all human. That’s all! Thank you!!!
Review by Bevibel:
It’s hard out here for those of us trying to become better people. I get the temptation, in a world where people with disproportionate power can be effectively immune to accountability no matter how terrible they are, to claim that the victim should always be centered. Certainly, it’s crucial to prioritize caring for and creating safety for those who have been hurt, and it’s also important (and, sadly, extremely difficult in our society) to strip power from those who have wielded it to do harm. But it’s also important not to entirely neglect the human needs of those who have done harm. This is not to say that someone who has been hurt has a duty to care for the person who hurt them, but it is to say that everyone else in the life of a person who has caused harm has a collective responsibility to do what they can to support them, hold them accountable, and push them into becoming better. Treating them poorly, cutting them off from support, or ghosting them (let alone encouraging or pressuring others to do the same) because they hurt someone - even someone you care about - is not accountability, and is vanishingly unlikely to help anyone become a better person. A culture that normalizes this behavior creates an environment where the only way to avoid social ostracization (one of the most painful experiences a human being can endure) is to insist on one’s own perpetual victimhood and lack of wrongdoing, and endeavor to make anyone atttempting to criticize you out to be a total monster. The real harm of this form of “cancel culture” - which, if you boil it down, is really just policing and punishing each other through the threat of ostracization and social exile - is that it creates an enormous social pressure to never reflect on one’s own behavior, never admit wrongdoing, and never engage in the intensely vulnerable work of trying to figure out what you did, understand why it was harmful, and determine how you can do better moving forward. It keeps us all never changing, never growing, never learning.
Wow that sure was a lot of words dedicated to a soapbox that was barely about this Line Rider video! But it’s actually extremely relevant, because We Never Change is the first Line Rider work that really captured the complicated feelings I have around this topic, even if it the way it expressed those feelings was a little bit clunky at times. A cynical reading of the track might conclude that it’s a vent track, that its purpose is to put MoonXplorer’s haters in their place, that MoonXplorer is themself playing the victim here. But what I see is a young person straining to grasp a vision for a better world, a world where becoming the best version of ourselves is easy and free, without all the words or concepts to articulate how we might get there. (If you’re interested in how me might get there, reader, as a starting point I’d recommend looking into and reflecting on restorative justice and transformative justice.)
Despite similar subject matter, We Never Change is almost the polar opposite of the pastel-smothered bitterness of CatAtKmart’s January release For a friend, a track so radioactive that despite flashy visuals, bright colors, and high production values, it was never mentioned, let alone reviewed, in these roundups, until now. Unlike For a friend, We Never Change contains no targeted harassment, no attempts to "take down" others, and no screenshot montages intended to name and shame. Thank goodness! MoonXplorer isn’t here to vent, they’re here to beg us to try imagining something better than that.
SO I WANNA LIVE…
IN A WOODEN HOUSE…
WHERE MAKING MORE FRIENDS
WOULD BE EASY…
MoonXplorer presents hurtful comments similarly to how Toivo presents them in I Can’t Ride These Lines Without You, but rather than using them to talk about the struggle and pain of the creative process, MoonXplorer includes them in We Never Change to prompt the viewer to reflect on how painfully tragic this all is, and push us towards imagining how we might create a better world, one where people are allowed to change.
Please… let us change…
The color palette of We Never Change does the heavy lifting in conveying this sense of tragedy, contrasting the sun-drenched climactic lamentation with the the greys of despair in the track’s final moments. But there are numerous other elements that effectively support this message too - slow-motion that lasts the entire track, scrawled lyrics that seem to be quietly screaming at the start of the climax, an unexpected departure from the linear left-to-right track into a loop when the compilation of hateful messages first appear, and a despairing tumble across craggy lines when MoonXplorer attempts to put into words how upsetting this all is.
And it really is tragic. Humans, on balance, want to be better! We want to care for each other! We want to avoid hurting each other! Who doesn’t want a world where making more friends would be easy?! It’s one of the great tragedies of our time that a scant few people with a desire to cling to power have been so effective at pitting us against each other and destroying our ability to care for each other. So, it’s deeply meaningful to me to see young people having these awful interpersonal experiences, and, rather than lashing out, they’re looking around and asking, “Can’t we do better than this?” Because the more of us that believe we can, the brighter the future looks.
after they're gone and it's over - Alt-Key Here
[cw: death]
Review by Bevibel:
after they’re gone and it’s over is extremely simple - flatsled movement synced to solo piano with some tiny scribbled drawings and thoughts scrawled out in text, uploaded on a second channel. It’s also easily my favorite Alt-Key track to date. It reminds me of Autumn’s Truce or vsbl’s Cold Death, except the movement is much more expressive. The track it reminds me the most of is Jade’s Who Cares if You Exist, if it were more circuitous in its movement and more explicit in what it’s about. What it boils down to for me is that after they’re gone and it's over captures grief like no Line Rider track I’ve seen before. Even a track like You Are the Sunset or After has a sense of progression, of moving through something difficult to arrive at a new understanding. after they’re gone and it’s over doesn’t go anywhere - it meanders aimlessly, sinking lower and lower and finally collapsing without having learned anything. after they’re gone and it’s over doesn’t have a narrative structure - it has scattered, disjointed thoughts, half-formed sentiments, and half-remembered words and images. It doesn’t offer any answers or paths forward, just sits with the feelings of loss and despair, grasping for meaning but never quite finding it. It’s nothing like any of Alt-Key’s main-channel efforts - attempts at polished spectacle that never had enough emotional substance to really pull me in. after they’re gone and it’s over is a raw wound that almost didn’t get uploaded at all. As someone who’s been struggling through their own grief over the past few months, I’m glad it did.
Bosh Bosh oo ee oo - BDDO影业
Review by September:
Well, this one was a bit of a pleasant surprise! These last few months, there hasn’t been a whole lot of interesting Line Rider activity on the video-sharing website bilibili, which has been a little sad to see after an exciting flurry of activity from the Chinese Line Rider community from people like xiaozhou2333 and StarySky from late 2023 into early 2024. And, to be honest, I initially missed this release because I had stopped checking the platform during my short tenure as head editor, and it was only because of Bevibel’s archival sleuthing that we discovered this little gem of a track.
Now, don’t get me wrong, Bosh Bosh oo ee oo is not some kind of staggering masterpiece of art, but as someone who has Feelings about Vocaloid, this track is certainly a welcome little treat. Although the track is set to the 8-year-old banger “Miku” by the chiptune/video game music group Anamanaguchi and featuring the titular Hatsune Miku, BDDO影业’s track is clearly based off channelcaststation’s “oo ee oo”, an excellent fan animation set to the song which went mega-viral in 2023. Bosh Bosh oo ee oo even goes so far as to directly rip animations from the original in several sections, such as the animations of sliders, headphone jacks, and dials designed to emphasize Hatsune Miku’s electro-musical prowess. And when it’s not lifting directly from channelcastation’s work, BDDO影业 often tries to emulate the visual structure of the animation whenever it can—such as placing Bosh in a file folder in a manner similar to Miku, or cutting to three offsled poses which are meant to mimic similar poses in the original. In order to do this, Bosh Bosh oo ee oo manages to go places which are novel and entertaining from a line rider perspective—featuring, for example, a series of drawings of what I can only describe as “Miku Bosh” as a plushie, a keychain, and a posable anime figure—drawings that I will cherish for the foreseeable future. There’s also a great moment where Miku Bosh is bedecked with a crown, sitting on a line above several other riders in order to visualize the lyric “I’m on top of the world because of you,” which seems entirely original and works as a really fun little moment. Little nuggets like this make the track a fun and pleasant watch that’s decently worthwhile for avid Line Rider fans.
Of course, this attempt to recreate the work of channelcaststation—the kind of fully animated, bouncily music-synced animation that can turn a one-minute loop into a ten-minute Vibing session, the obsessive work of a Miku megafan whose creations end up getting turned into officially-approved merchandise—can only end up with a pale imitation of the source material. It’s one of my classic pet peeves in this medium—unless you bring something new to the table with your Line Rider track, music-syncing something which already has a high-quality visualizer means you’re often just making an inferior visualizer. And in many ways that’s still the case here—if I had to pick only one to watch, I would pick channelcaststation’s work every time. Except in this one facet: I think this track does reveal something about both Vocaloid and Line Rider, and the intersection between the two.
It’s actually something that I’ve pondered before in the past. Which online community would you say is most similar to Line Rider? I think most people would say Geometry Dash, but sometimes I think my answer might be Vocaloid. Line Rider and Hatsune Miku released within a year of each other (Bosh is actually several months older than Miku!), and they both capture something nostalgically Online about the mid 2000’s—that distinctly Frutiger Aero vibe. More than that, each of them uses computer simulation to let artists do work they might be too shy, dysphoric, or socially disaffected to create with their own bodies: for Miku that’s singing, but for Bosh that’s dance. Obviously there’s a massive difference in the size of these two fandoms, but in terms of the respective age of each of these creative communities and the sorts of distinctly old-online-community pomo-meta artworks being put out, there’s a certain kinship I can’t help but confirmation-bias myself into seeing. In this sense, the combination of Bosh and Hatsune Miku in this track feels intuitive, instinctually Correct. Indeed, perhaps the real Hatsune Miku was the sick tracks we made along the way.
Scientist - Instantflare / Ray
Review by Bevibel:
Ray isn’t exactly known for feel-good tracks, let alone on the subject of romance. I mean, this is the creator not only of the devastating Palaces and the angst-filled Sympathy is a knife but also of the devastating i was seeing you through rose-coloured glasses (i still do, i'm sorry). I don’t know how many people expected a track like this, but I certainly didn’t. Scientist is kind of like if you took ATTENTION, stripped it of any hint of introspection or inner turmoil, and made it more colorful and fun than any prior Instantflare release. Set to a bop by K-Pop group TWICE about following your heart rather than your head, Scientist takes us through a number of minimalist but colorful environments designated by the sections of the song. One memorable section has a prism emitting a rainbow that slowly grows to fill the screen as Bosh rocks back and forth in time with the music. The movement overall is quite simple, yet precise, conveying the danceability and simplicity of the music quite well. I don’t have a lot to say about Scientist, but it’s undeniably a good time.
boy who cried art - moss7
Review by September:
moss7 continues on his absolute tear of producing Line Rider track after Line Rider track, and perhaps the best of these tracks this month is boy who cried art, a work which combines its various offbeat elements to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
If I were to describe my current feelings about moss7’s work, I would say that I feel as though I recognize and respect many of the aesthetic decisions he makes in his tracks—such as the use of predictive camera, leaving line hitboxes on, or the insistence upon a static-feeling “noodling around” movement style—as ones that are intentional and thought out, even if I might vehemently disagree with those decisions. moss7 is relentlessly experimental with movement styles and various visual garnishes for his work, and that quality is admirable. boy who cried art, however, is an excellent example what it looks like when those decisions come together in a way I do actually agree with, creating a piece of work that feels like it goes somewhere creative and expressive over the course of its run-time.
boy who cried art is split into two distinct sections: “Cycle” and “Breaking Free.” The cycle portion of the track is focused on a singular static position: a blue circle framed by the white square of the camera’s 1:1 aspect ratio. In this circle, white-colored movement lines fade in and out, taking on the distinct appearance of clouds—evoking the “pale blue dot” of our planet viewed from far away—as various Boshes fall or fade into frame and interact with these lines. Over the course of this section, these Boshes do a wide variety of things: sometimes they might manual the inside edge of the circle or orbit around it, sometimes they might dismount or fall out of frame. But the vast majority of the time they are just kind of, once again, noodling around. But with the camera framing, the repeated dismounting of Bosh, and cyclical imagery of the track in this section, instead of feeling like the track simply fails to progress beyond a few static, flow-killy movement ideas, we feel as though Bosh is trapped, spinning her wheels, unable to make progress. moss7’s flow-killer movement here then becomes an aesthetic asset, a narrative device in the larger arc of the track.
Of course, this kind of aesthetic set-up would be for nothing if there wasn’t any sort of payoff. And we do get that payoff, in the form of “Breaking Free,” which serves as a radical departure from the previous section by panning away from the blue circle, following Bosh as they, yes, “break free” from their “cycle” into more linear, low-gravity movement which bounces around a variety of fun and varied visual elements. While the movement in this section isn’t anything super breathtaking, this moment works so well because it’s such a radical departure of the one and a half minutes of static track which came before, helping us actually feel as though we are breaking free into a new environment. In combination with the music—a Kaz Moon song by the same name—which features lyrics which convey themes around the struggle to create art in an unsupportive environment—the track is a wonderful little abstract visual poem that is satisfying to my brain’s desire for metaphorical and symbolic meaning.
moss7 often struggles with tracks that feel like they have an actual narrative or structural arc to them—oftentimes, we just noodle around somewhere a little while, and then we’re done. But boy who cried art shows moss7’s potential as a creator in terms of making tracks that have deeper symbolic and structural meaning. That’s the power of contrast in art, baby! So it’s clear moss7 absolutely can make tracks that feel as though they progress forward with some kind of narrative meaning, and I hope he brings that more often into the tracks he makes.
The Town Inside Me - autumnroo538
Review by Bevibel:
This is an odd one. Autumn has been, as of late, alternating between emotionally hard-hitting work about love and human connection and vulnerability and fun tracks music-synced to anime music. The Town Inside Me is a little bit of both. The track is set to a fun piece of music from the Japanese fighting game series Guilty Gear - specifically about the character Bridget, fan favorite and canonical trans woman (though the history of her characterization as such is rather messy). It’s not hard to see trans themes in lyrics like “I've had a gray haze for a long time though / I never found out what it was” and later, “Let's paint the gray haze into sky blue / I know who you are!”, and Autumn has taken this and run with it. The lyrics do seem kind of odd though, perhaps due to struggles with translation from the original Japanese - awkward grammar, bizarre emphasis, strange metaphor, and wording that (for lack of a better term) doesn’t really flow (shoutout to September for sharing her thoughts on this). I think this is what keeps The Town Inside Me, while undeniably fun, from cohering into something remotely as emotionally moving as Something Comforting or Will Anybody Ever Love Me?. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to love here - vibrant colors, synced movement and visuals, dynamic camerawork, and cute little illustrations, all in Autumn’s trademark style. It’s fun!
Witch - Leonis
Review by Autumn:
Witch feels like a transfem reclamation of the quirk that was brought up by the online hypermasculine culture of the LR quirk community in the early 2010s...and I'm all here for it!
...Okay, but seriously. If you know your Line Rider history, you will know how toxic the Line Rider community was in the first dozen years of its existence, especially in the early 2010s - Line Rider’s lowest point - where most of the community were quirk elitists, or people who believed that quirk is the ultimate form of Line Rider. From the limited amount that I've learned about the history, Leonis (known as “Kramwood” back then) played a significant part in that weird quirk scene, cranking out quirk tracks that were seen as stellar towards most of the community. Those tracks include The Dark Eternal Night, the track that transitioned into Witch almost 13 years later.
Knowing all this, it’s just so delightful to see how far Leonis has come compared to back then, since she’s now a badass trans woman! Like, Witch is literally just The Dark Eternal Night transitioning to a woman. The song went from some generic metal song to a, once again, badass feminized industrial metal song and there’s now some cool zoom work and color changes within the track, all pretty fem and badass. Here’s the thing though: there’s pretty much no stylistic change in the movement, even in the much newer extension Leonis added! This is why I called it a “transfem reclamation”. Leonis sees this toxic quirk community she was a part of, reclaims it with confidence and empathy, and gives out a track that this trans female Line Rider loves! Witch oozes so much confidence that The Dark Eternal Night was trying to convey, but was held back by insecurity. Once again, I’m all here for it!
I’m sorry, Leonis from 2015. You may have thought you were a “legend” in your High Notions 2 “final track”, but Witch may be the most “legendary” track that Leonis has made so far IMO. Good shit. Hope to see more!
Review by Bevibel:
I can’t say I had force-feminized gigaquirk on my 2024 bingo card, but here we are! In Witch, Leonis has taken the first 30 seconds from an old 2012 track and extended it with new music, an edgy industrial/pop/metal banger by experimental female pop artist Poppy that sounds a lot like Sophie’s Ponyboy with metal guitar riffs. Leonis has also crafted a color palette of pastel and dark pinks and purples by modifying the rider’s scarf and utilizing color triggers in the Line Rider Advanced branch Line Rider Overhaul. Long time readers of this blog can probably guess that I’m having a hard time figuring out how I feel about this one. I’ve long been something of a gigaquirk hater, but some of my favorite Line Rider work is about transing one’s gender. It seems I’ve been had! In any case, Leonis does a great job of slowly blending the 2012 manuquirk into more recent gigaquirk fare. Though, how much has gigaquirk really evolved in the last six years? Even the most recent bits of Witch wouldn’t look out of place in a 2018 release, at least to me. If you ask me, quirk as a whole is fundamentally about dissociation from reality, and properly force-feminizing a gigaquirk would necessarily involve transcending the boundaries of Line Rider physics glitches into something more about the the human body, with all its meat and fluids and curves and capacity for expression and connection. On the other hand, maybe I just need to stop insisting that there’s only one way to make queer art in Line Rider, let gigaquirk be hot girl shit, and get over myself.
not intentional. - moss7
Review by Bevibel:
not intentional has a very cool aesthetic of clouds of orange “spraypaint” inside scribbles set against an ever-changing rainbow pastel background color. It appears inspiration for this came from the album art for the Kaz Moon’s album “Bleed”, which contains the song used, “Left Hand”. It’s a pretty straightfoward recreation that unfortunately remains surface-level, rather than substantially engaging with a song about self-induced isolation and alienation. On the contrary, the track consists of superficially-synced and unrelentingly aggressive remount-quirk. The idea of using hit test to make lines appear from a cloud of paint as they are utilized is also really strong and unique, but it too feels disjointed and out of place here. not intentional is like a very strange salad full of theretically great ingredients that just don’t fit together, leaving me wondering what moss7 was thinking putting croutons, dried tomatoes, carrots, chicken and goat cheese together and calling it good. Where’s the lettuce? (In this metaphor, the lettuce is a unfiying vision.)
Lone Lagoon - The Red Penguin
Review by Bevibel:
Okay, I’ll say it. I don’t think 10-point cannons are as good for music sync as some Line Rider creators think they are. Don’t get me wrong, there are places where they can really work, such as in Autumn’s Something Comforting, but nothing kills capacity for expression like reaching for a 10-point cannon generator as the first tool in your music syncing toolbelt. Not because it’s “cheating” or anything silly like that, just because, well, a huge part of the appeal of Line Rider music syncing is that Line Rider is a physics engine. A 10-point cannon is the ultimate override of that physics engine - with one, you can instantly move the rider in any direction, at any speed. It’s a very powerful tool, and if a creator uses it without any clear intention, it’s remarkably easy to make track that feels incredibly clunky. None of this is to say Lone Lagoon isn’t worth watching, if you like satisfying manuquirk synced to lengthy guitar solos. The Red Penguin has had a solid grasp on music syncing fundamentals for years, and Lone Lagoon is by no means devoid of ideas - there are a number of simple but striking animations that particularly stand out. Late in the track, there’s an excellently-chosen kramual airtime sync - the only kramual in the track, if I’m not mistaken. If The Red Penguin had been as judicious and restrained with the 10-point cannon usage as they were with kramuals, I think Lone Lagoon would have been much more satisfying to watch.
Rat Taxi - Malizma
Review by Bevibel:
There’s not too much to say about Rat Taxi beyond the vague unsettling horror of the custom rider looking like the Mouse King from the Nutcracker driving a cartoonishly small taxi cab. But I can’t resist commenting on the false ending! First, Malizma keeps our rat rider in a stall for a full 20-second keyboard solo, and then riding around in circles inside a wheel of cheese for another 20 seconds, before rocketing upwards into the second half of the song. It’s really fun and creative and satisfying, probably one of my favorite fakeout endings in Line Rider.
Paper-Sails - moss7
Review by MoonXplorer:
moss7/Moon is a very unique creator that has been doing a lot of tracks recently, with some very nice tracks last month. One track that caught my eye though is Paper-Sails. On the surface, it's your typical track, but this one has cute little scenery of clouds and lines! It also uses the gravity well feature to give the track a more rough look! Overall, a nice track! This review might be a bit too short, but I think this is enough to describe how good this track is!
Review by Bevibel:
I was struck by the odd movement in Paper-Sails upon first watch. The rider seemed to spin and flail in ways that felt off to me somehow, like there was nothing solid in the track. This made sense when I checked the description and saw that this uses an experimental mod that allows lines to only collide with certain contact points, in this case the hands and feet. It’s a fascinating idea, one I wish was deployed in a way more intelligible to the average viewer, and utilized for more than simple quirky noodling. Maybe making the line hitboxes visible was intended to showcase this mechanic? Unfortunately, it undermines the rest of the track’s cute pastel aesthetic created by the colors, curves, and music.
Alone - Downloading Kasper
Review by Bevibel:
Downloading Kasper appears to have discovered Line Rider last year, and it seemed likely at first that they were destined to join the masses of youth who tried and bounced off Line Rider, but every few months they come back and post some more tracks. Most have been unremarkable beyond having decent music sync, but Alone contains some experimentation with simple animation that could almost pass for early Andrew Hess. Here’s hoping that this isn’t the last we’ve seen from Kasper.
Thanks for reading!