June 2024 Line Rider Roundup
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Line Rider Monthly Roundup: SANITY EDITION. I am September, your unelected reviewtrix! And, true to my pledge to the citizens of this newsletter, I have managed to eke out this veritable portfolio of Takes in the month appropriate to its station, and plan to work harder to move the timeline up even further, so that I might be able to comment on developments in the trackmaking arts in a more timely manner. We have a slew of banger tracks and banger reviews this month—exemplary of the deeply sane faculties that I clearly possess, of course, but also deeply indebted to our guest reviewers this month: UTD, MoonXplorer, and Bevibel "Rabid Squirrel" Harvey, each of whom I fall before, wailing cries of gratitude that inspire awe and revulsion in equal measure. Truly, dark knowledges, eldritch beings from beyond the stars, have now pledged fealty to them--granting them the power to tip the karmic scales in their favor. And you, too, can have this power, if you send to me a review for a track published in the month of July via my discord (s.eptember)—I beg of thee, please!!! Your voice, too, has value beyond measure, and it can contribute to the vast body of literature this community is creating, further enriching it with additional perspectives to be contained in the oceanic consciousness of this archive. If only you, too, wrote a review, readily I would praise you as a hero and raise your banner in this austere fortress, a shock of cerulean which would venerate your contribution to the Cause. The Cause, of course, being Line Rider—the lovely art of which I have presented here to you. Please enjoy this feast of words, light, sounds, and movement!
Click here for a playlist of all videos in this roundup (in order). Titles also link to videos individually.
Something Comforting - gavinroo538
Review by UTD:
2023 was a miserable year for me. I had made plans to go to college the year prior, hoping to get away from my abusive parents, but those plans fell through. I got accepted to the college I applied to, but instead of finishing the intake process, I just froze in fear... for months. I had an opportunity to escape, and I blew it. At the beginning of this year, I felt defeated. It seemed as though one horrible thing after the other kept happening to me, and it seemed as though I deserved it. I'd never get another chance to live the life I want. I'd never get another chance to be who I want to be. It was all my fault. But what made 2023 truly devastating was that I also got a taste of how it felt to have that autonomy and fulfillment. 2022 was a great year. I met new friends I could actually relate to... friends who cared about me. I discovered I was a plural system, and felt like I was understanding myself for the first time. I made so much art that I'm still proud of to this day. And for once, I felt like I could actually trust the people in my life; that I wouldn't have to worry about getting hurt; that I was having a positive impact on others. But in 2023, this newfound confidence in myself and my abilities quickly deteriorated, and as the year got worse and worse, I just wanted to go back to the previous year even more.
...What happened? Part of me wants to point to a singular event and say that's the moment everything went to shit. But life is never that simple. Taking off my rose-tinted glasses for a moment, 2022 was also an extremely overwhelming year for me. A million things were happening all at once at every moment and I barely had a chance to breathe. By the end of that year, I was completely exhausted. But I still desperately wanted to maintain the momentum I had started. So I kept pushing myself... and eventually, I hit a brick wall.
Getting made me want more.
Hoping made me hurt more.
There must be something wrong with me.
In an interview with The Fader, Porter Robinson expressed his reasons for the processed vocals on his second album, Nurture:
It was sometimes a way of expressing an inner voice. Sometimes it was a way of showcasing the most scared parts of myself. And sometimes it was a way of kind of being an angel or a devil on my shoulder. And then there were other times where it was a bit of a security blanket. It was a way of not having to risk the rejection of really trying to sing.
I don't know if this is a hot take, but the processed vocals are by far the most interesting part of Nurture. What makes them so interesting is the fact that Porter Robinson could've transformed his voice to sound like anything, and yet he chose to make his voice sound more... for lack of a better term, feminine. Why? Was it just because the voice sounded nice, or was there something more to it? What even is "really trying to sing", anyways? Ultimately, I don't know Porter and I'm not gonna pretend I do. But the way this vulnerable, inner voice of oneself was depicted; the idea of this voice feeling safer than your "real voice" on an album all about change... let's just say there's a very specific interpretation I like going with.
Autumn came out as trans in late 2023, and since then, she's released plenty of tracks about being trans, going into the struggle of discovering her identity and the joy of being out and proud. But out of all these tracks, Something Comforting stands out the most to me. So let's talk about it. The titular song by Porter Robinson goes back and forth between his regular voice and his processed vocals. Autumn utilizes this contrast as a way of representing herself both before and after transition. While Gavin from mid-2023, represented by Porter's regular voice, is questioning whether or not to "send this void" that they have away, Autumn from 2024, represented by Porter's processed voice, is shown responding to this previous version of herself with empathy and kindness. In other words, this is Autumn's take on pocke's Revisitation, and it's everything I wanted out of that track and more.
My biggest problem with Revisitation was its conclusion: "I wouldn't have it any other way". Whether or not that was a lie or failed to resonate with me or both, it just didn't sit right. The truth is, I wish so many things didn't pan out the way that they did. I wish I could take back some of my actions. I wish I had a better life. And that's okay. There's a common mentality that you should live your life without regrets... that it's noble to do so... but that's just not feasible and also not helpful? Regrets are a universal, neutral force. They're an acknowledgement that you could've done something better at some point in life, and everybody has something they could've done better. You can either let your regrets consume you or try to ignore they exist or confront them head on, but for most regrets, they eventually become irrelevant as life goes on. That's probably why it's so easy to ignore them. Revisitation went that route and was worse for it in my opinion, but Something Comforting chose what I believe to be the more constructive third option.
This shouldn't come as a surprise. As Shel lamented about in her blog post Telepathy, Astral Projection, and the Time Traveling Transsexual:
I think every trans person at some point has had that fantasy of telling your younger self everything you know now so you could take a shortcut and live more of your younger years as your true self. You'd pass easier, have more time to date who you want to date how you want to date them, and so forth.
Regret and shame are often relevant, if not outright inherent to the experience of being trans, and being trans is more often than not a result of confronting said emotions. Sure, these feelings are ignorable in most other situations, but sometimes, they're really important and you can't just make them go away. Autumn understands this intuitively. Signs exclaiming "You need to change" start appearing in a similar way to how the signs in ∞឵ and I's Designated Male At Birth appear on screen. A whirlwind of colorful environments and cryptic yet evocative images constantly barrage Autumn to a point where she doesn't even know what to make of them. And through it all, a lingering question remains: "Who are you?"
Who is Autumn now? This leads into the other thing about Revisitation. In that track, the past is framed as something reified and separate from the present rather than something connected to it. "I wish I could reach out to you and tell you that it's okay to not hide or lie, but I can't change the past." It's not an entirely inaccurate way of viewing the past in relation to the present. Something Comforting also has a degree of separation between the two. And yet most of Something Comforting feels like a response to this framing. It feels like a response to how Porter Robinson views the processed voice. Past Autumn or Present Autumn... Who's the real version of her? They both are, obviously! They're both Autumn. They're both singing the same lyrics at various points. They both bleed (or glitch) into each other. They both express themselves through Line Rider in ways unique to them. Autumn is essentially still the same person she was back then. This is even reflected in the trackmaking process, as most of the ideas for this track were developed around mid-2023, and only recently were they fully realized. But Autumn has also grown a lot too. That's where the ending comes into play. In the end, Autumn sends a message to her past self. It's very reminiscent of a previous track from Autumn, at the door… the only difference being, the message here is much more meaningful. Instead of just saying things will get better, Autumn recognizes that things used to look hopeless, but less emphasis is placed on things getting better and more emphasis is placed on just... breathing. The track doesn't end with this mystical better place like at the door… does. It ends with deep breaths in and deep breaths out. And that's enough for Autumn to convince herself that things will be okay.
I've grown a lot too. And this track serves as a good reminder of why it's better to look towards the future, even if the past was better than the present is now. I wouldn't trade the growth I made for anything... and I'm sure Autumn feels the same way. This track is also a reminder that the future can change, and even if a potentially great future we thought for ourselves is no longer possible, that doesn't mean we can't make a new future that's even better. This track is also an incredible visualizer to an incredible Porter Robinson song. But most importantly, this track is a good reminder to extend some empathy and understanding towards your past self, cause no matter how much we wanna separate ourselves from who we were back then, the past will always be connected to our present. We're just older now. And it's better to accept our past selves and learn from them than it is to pretend we were never our past selves to begin with.
At my lowest point this year, I sent an early draft of it's time to give up on being human to Autumn for the Detective Competition. This early draft was much more empty, didn't contain the more optimistic second half, and was much easier to interpret as being about suicide. I was done with everything by that point, and didn't really care as to whether or not I was hurting myself. Autumn could've easily just accepted the submission right then and there, but she held off and asked if I was okay. The next day, I rescinded my submission and kicked myself for being such an idiot. The following month, I'd continue to work on that track thanks to encouragement from Bevibel, and through working on that track, I worked through... everything I was feeling. Had my submission for the Detective Competition been immediately accepted, I probably would've never finished the track, and I'd probably be worse off today. So... thank you Autumn. I don't know who I am right now but maybe one day, I will. And I hope my future self can look back at this point in time and be proud of how far they've come and excited for how much farther they'll have to go.
Review by Bevibel:
Something Comforting was the first Line Rider release of 2024 to make me cry. This is remarkable in and of itself, but is made even more remarkable by how strikingly it resembles Arglin’s body of work, especially in the tightly-synced highspeed sections that lean heavily on 10-point cannons. For me, Something Comforting represents an iteration of a particular well-worn track style that transcends generic spectacle to finally, finally, arrive at a place with real emotional weight. Of course, the visualization of the two different vocal registers reimagined as Autumn speaking to her pre-transition self is what really pulls the piece together, but I was genuinely stunned how effectively simple gimmicks straight out of the standard Arglin playbook tugged at my heartstrings once they had that emotional foundation to build off of. A lesson I think I have been slow to learn is that just about any technique, no matter how gimmicky any particular usage might seem, can be used as a conduit for emotion. It’s just a matter of figuring out how best to use it in service of something meaningful, of which Something Comforting is a stellar example.
Will Anybody Ever Love Me? - gavinroo538
Review by Bevibel:
In my review of Ray’s i was seeing you through rose-coloured glasses (i still do, i'm sorry) last year, I made a joke about how if watching September Hofmann’s Lipstick Stains remake made you feel sad and alone, then you might like rose-coloured glasses. Now I find myself in the annoying position of wanting to make the same joke again, even though I already made it. Can we all just pretend that I hadn’t made it before? Great. Now can we pretend that I just made it about this track for the first time? You’re the best. It really means a lot that you care about me enough to humor me like this.
Meta-jokes aside, I believe the comparison is apt. Lipstick Stains is about appreciating queer love that currently exists, and rose-coloured glasses is about unrequited queer love. I find both of these very relatable, but more in an “Oh yeah I’ve been there” way than in an “Ugh goddamn it fuck this shit” way, you know? Will Anybody Ever Love Me?, however, is about something far more relatable to me personally than either of these: yearning. A persistent, wistful, melancholy desire for love, one that is infuriatingly vague and yet overwhelming in its intensity. A voracious need to connect deeply with someone somewhere somehow, so all-consuming that it threatens to spill over into reckless self-destruction:
Tie me to a tiny wooden raft
Burn my body, point me to the undertow
Push me off into the void at last
Watch me drift and watch me struggle, let me go
Will Anybody Ever Love Me? opens with an extended offsled section with minimal music, before expanding into a vast scribbly landscape, fittingly reminiscent of another track by Ray, PLEASE BE NICE.
I thought it was easy
But everyone killed me
I'm dead in the ground
I don't even know who you are
But where PLEASE BE NICE is bleak and raw and full of righteous fury, lamenting the abysmal failures of connecting with other human beings over the internet, Will Anybody Ever Love Me? is achingly earnest. After all, why would anyone be so earthshakingly angry and upset by being treated poorly — and why would anyone find that rage so relatable — if it didn’t stem from a desire to connect, to be vulnerable, to know and be known? Will Anybody Ever Love Me? is a piece about that raw, unfiltered, unvarnished desire to trust and be trusted, to see and be seen, to love and be loved.
Will anybody ever love me?
For good reasons, without grievance, not for sport
Will anybody ever love me?
In every season, pledge allegiance to my heart
A few years ago, I read an advice column titled “Help, I’m The Loneliest Person In The World!” (if you find the title as relatable as I did, I recommend it!) and I was struck by this bit in particular:
You can choose to be a million times happier than you are right now. All you have to do is say, “I deserve to be happy.” Write it down in big letters with a Sharpie and tape it to the wall. Now write, “I deserve to be deeply loved.” Tape that to the wall.
A few more years ago than that (honk if you’re over 30), when I was in what was, in retrospect, perhaps my deepest depression, I wrote out some affirmations on a post-it note that I would read aloud to myself every night. They said things like “I am a talented and successful artist” and “I am loved and cared for”. It absolutely did help, but later on I began to question if that was really the direction I wanted to chart for the rest of my life. After all, would it not be possible to be a talented and successful artist, but also be miserable? Or, worse, to habitually hurt others to maintain my self-image as talented and successful? Or, even more troublingly, what if I get so optimistic about convincing myself that I am already loved that I fail to see when someone is actually treating me terribly and calling it love? I wish that were a hypothetical and not something that actually happened to me, but, well, here we are.
Tie me to the final wooden stake
Burn my body, celebrate the afterglow
Wash away the summer sins I made
Watch me drift and watch me struggle, let me go
Anyway, reading this particular advice column unlocked something in me: I didn’t want to live trying to gaslight myself into believing that I was already loved and cared for in all the ways I needed! No, I wanted to live in an unshakeable belief that I was deserving of being loved, being cared for, being happy, etc. Those were things worth convincing myself of, regardless of any measure of objective truth. I grabbed a fresh post-it note and wrote down the following:
I deserve to be happy!
I deserve to love and to be loved deeply!
I deserve to have my autonomy respected and prioritized!
I am fundamentally valuable, regardless of my usefulness to others!
I still have this post-it note - It’s prominently on display a couple of feet away from me as I write this. Well, technically, I re-wrote it on a fresh post-it note recently to be more legible and added “I deserve to be cared for” between the first two lines, but you know what I mean - it remains an important grounding mechanism for me to remind myself what matters most.
What were we talking about? Right, the Line Rider track Will Anybody Ever Love Me?. Well, after spending most of the track offsled, being tossed helplessly about on a sea of all-consuming desires, the rider finally gets back on the sled as this line is repeated over and over:
My burning heart
My burning heart
My burning heart (Will anybody ever love me? Love me)
My burning heart (Will anybody ever love me? Love me)
My burning heart (Will anybody ever love me? Love me)
My burning heart
Have you ever been consumed by a feeling without being destroyed by it?
Sometimes, our gut reaction is to unthinkingly or even subconsciously suppress or ignore or outright deny the existence of the intense emotions we hold in our hearts, out of a fear that it might be inconvenient, problematic, or potentially even harmful to ourselves or others. But also, if we can find ways to feel and express those overwhelming emotions — say, an all-consuming yearning to love and be loved deeply — in ways that are relatively safe for ourselves and those around us, it can be incredibly rewarding and healing.
I want to say something, and I want to give it as much weight as I possibly can. I want it to be known that I have hurt and been hurt, that I have suffered and have caused suffering, that I have forgiven and refused to forgive. I am holding all of this in my heart when I say: I believe that everyone — everyone — deserves to trust and be trusted, to care and be cared for, to know and be known, and to love and be loved, deeply. All I ask of you, dear reader, is to accept that you deserve it yourself.
Mirror - gavinroo538
Review by September:
Mirror is the third of three releases from Autumn/gavinroo538 this month—and all together, they make a real trifecta of high-quality stuff. Autumn has been on a bit of a hot streak coming out of the month before with Hind’s Hall, and the quality of her releases has continued, with Mirror being no exception.
The central thematic concern of Mirror is that of the “inner voice,” a rather common psychological phenomenon wherein one has an internal monologue which ponders and comments upon the things happening in the person’s life. Inner voices can take a wide variety of forms and tones, from positive and uplifting to a deep pit of negative self-talk—some people, such as my partner, even lack this inner voice altogether. But for those of us who do have internal monologues, Mirror examines how these voices which speak inside us grow and are cultivated—where the negative self-talk comes from, and how it can be turned towards something healthier and more positive. In particular, Autumn arrives at her analysis from a deeply personal one, intertwined with her transfeminity, examining how transphobic cultural messaging “come[s] to feel like things we’re saying to ourselves” and how eventually “these voices have become our own,” becoming a source of internalized oppression and one-sided arguments one might have in their head. Autumn writes out accusatory-sounding lyrics from Porter Robinson’s “Mirror”, like “You should be sorry,” “I’m tired of your questioning,” and “You cut down too easily,” depicting a kind of conflict between the thin-lined lyrical text and the thick-lined text, who responds, “But I don’t know what’s good for me!” But this inner conflict builds further, until we fall into a series of images of Autumn staring at herself in the mirror which explodes into an avalanche of rapid-fire, animated thoughts which capture the deep throes of dysphoria, “Idiot,” “You don’t deserve friends,” “You’re not trans,” “It’s just an act,” and ending on that poisonous thought that has rattled in the brains of many trans women: “you’re just a creepy gross man.” So often with the things we tell ourselves, we have to ask “Where did we learn this from? Who thought it was okay to tell this to us?” and identify the source of the things about ourselves we were made to believe were true.
How do we turn around this state of affairs? Autumn presents us with one compelling answer, thoughtfully quoting the animated “line as character” interactions in Apple’s Rigamortis, reframing it in terms of another kind of voice—that of a friend. An animated scribble representing a cloud of negative feelings surrounds Bosh’s head—but so does a friendly line, who tells Bosh, “You don’t look so good… Here, let me help guide you.” And, with the line’s movement in playful interaction with Bosh, the cloud over her head starts to dissipate. It’s honestly a deeply moving sequence, and the way it’s music-synced makes it all the better. After this moment, we return to the animated lyrics depicting negative self talk, but instead of arguing and conflict with this inner lyrics voice, Autumn reframes it, comforting the voice and assuring them that they AREN’T a burden, but in fact do deserve love and friends, countering negative self-talk with positive self talk. We conclude with Autumn looking in the mirror again, but now, she’s slowly begun to smile. The inner voice has turned “encouraging,” telling Autumn to “keep going… it’ll all be okay in the end.” That, I think, is the power of the kindness we can show each other—having a real person in your life be there, actually telling you that you’re worthwhile, can outweigh all the hateful messaging in the world, and transform the inner lives of the people we care about. Once again, we can ask, “Where did we learn this from?” — and find the beauty of community, of things we do to help each other. A track that can show us that and remind us of it is, I think, worth watching and celebrating in these strange, isolating times.
Hurt - Anonymous
[cw: self harm, depression, blood]
Review by MoonXplorer:
Of all the equally great and beautiful tracks I could write about, I feel like Anonymous’s track Hurt just stuck with me in a deep emotional level. Anonymous has put out tracks this past year like I’m just a ghost that convey what it feels like to be detached from reality, which I really liked and hoped that they would create more tracks that depict emotions like that, and I can’t say I’m disappointed.
According to Anonymous, Hurt was inspired by their “mental anguish”, and in the beginning of the track, they write down “I can't think anymore, but I can draw”. I relate to this a lot, as I would draw or make tracks whenever I felt hopeless and sad, which worked a lot of the time. In the track itself, Anonymous puts out this beautiful but strong scenery into the track. Lines that Bosh are riding on melt along the way, spikes are shown around the track, a heart is being impaled by one of them, and the list can just go on. At the very climax of the track, Bosh begins tumbling down a rocky hill as Johnny Cash's song goes on and it's only relieved at the end where a sign on the edge of a cliff is pointing to the bottom saying “the end”.
This part hits deep out of everything in the track. A sign just pointing to the bottom of a cliff, presenting your end of your journey. It's sad but it's something I can relate to. Watching through the climax of the track, it reminded me of when my partner and I would have these moments where we would just talk to each other about how we deserved to suffer and we didn't deserve each other, and that made me sad just thinking about it. Because we DO need each other. And I DO deserve my partner. And we would just silently comfort each other as time goes on and things would turn out well.
I'm glad Anonymous could put this out to the public and hope everything is ok.
Review by September:
“Anonymous,” the creator of Hurt, is a Line Rider channel that has been around for a few months now—and, during that time, this creator has presented the community with a rather curious case. Anonymous is very clearly the alt of somebody already in the Line Rider community, with their channel description (“Who Am I?”) almost inviting speculation. At one point, another Line Rider creator even asked if I was Anonymous because I am a poet and Anonymous had recently made a track set to the poem Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep, which I personally found to be quite funny for a number of reasons. No, I am not Anonymous, and I have my own suspicions about who they might be—which I will keep to myself, as it’s not my place to speculate. But they’re clearly someone who is familiar with making Line Rider tracks using the LRA versions of the game, and, based on their work in In The Air Tonight and Hurt, is probably someone who comes from a technical quirk background, featuring manuals and flips that have clearly been micro-adjusted to a high level of precision.
There are plenty of times people in the Line Rider community have made alt accounts as an avenue to explore new ideas in an environment where there might subjectively be less pre-existing expectations from other Line Rider community members, such as Instantflare’s creation of the Ray youtube channel, which allowed them to take a more experimental and emotional approach to Line Rider—and which, in the case of Ray, ended being wildly beneficial. As long as people signpost that these kinds of accounts are “Anonymous” alts and don’t go out of their way to deceive people, I’m generally supportive of people using alt accounts to break out of a creative rut. And in the case of Hurt, I think this has been rather successful experimental for “Anonymous” overall. To bring up Ray again, “Hurt” takes on the form of a kind of reverse-palaces, conveying a slow downhill slide towards emotional rock bottom which increasingly accelerates over the course of the track—until we reach a “rock bottom” only to discover there’s even lower places we could still go: a sheer cliff which we just barely stop short of, ominously evoking possibility of suicide. And this is where Anonymous’s technical skill really comes into play, being able to precisely adjust Bosh’s rocky descent to perfectly convey the weight and momentum of Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” in a way that feels naturalistic and unplanned. It’s emotionally effective stuff, and I hope Anonymous, whoever they are, continues this experiment with using their skills to explore the emotional possibilities of Line Rider—and hopefully someday feels like they’re able to put a name to their tracks.
My First Line Rider Track in 10 Years - Motty
Review by September:
At first glance, My First Line Rider Track in 10 Years seems like a chill bit of old-school fling quirk that wouldn’t seem all that out of place if it had been, in fact, made ten years ago. However, if you look at the video description, it turns out this was actually made in the iPhone app version of Line Rider??? Which, I think this makes it the most technically complex bit of trackmaking ever produced on the significantly underpowered Line Rider mobile app, which already is quite a strange thing to remark upon. The app is almost certainly one of the least-used versions of Line Rider that come with music syncing tools, due in large part to its 4-dollar price-tag, making it one of only a few paid Line Rider versions. For that price, you receive a significant downgrade compared to linerider.com, which is not only free but also includes a more robust set of features which includes color layers, advanced camera controls, and modding support—and with David having quietly changed his title from “developer” to “maintainer” of Line Rider a couple years ago now, this state of affairs for the app is unlikely to change anytime soon. In the grand scheme of things, it looks like Line Rider (at 10k Google Play downloads) once again lost out that old war with copycat versions like Line Driver (at 5M Google Play downloads)—and the comparatively lackluster mobile app is probably at least partially to blame. The only unique thing you really do get from the app version of Line Rider is the option to create Line Rider tracks on your phone with a touchscreen-centric UI, which might make it one of the few viable versions of Line Rider for people who own a smartphone but do not own a personal computer. It makes me wonder whether this is the situation that Motty finds themself to be in.
Creation process aside, I find the track itself to be a quite compelling bit of fling-centric trackmaking. I’m kind of a sucker for that post-2010/pre-2015 era of Line Rider quirk, which kind of endures as a swan song for a kind of trick-focused era of trackmaking that was closer in spirit to skateboarding rather than computer programming. You had people like Georgio_Jc, pure5152, Summoning, and .boo making these tracks that prioritized visually interesting movement, emphasizing things like a high degree of “flow,” dynamic momentum changes, and nonlinear track layouts. If Line Rider today is interpretive dance, these kids were skateboarders, and you know I was one of those teenagers who was just absolutely smitten by how cool the skaters were. And god, do I also love this track’s thoughtfully languid flings. Nowadays it’s so easy to max out the force of a fling or a chain that it’s easy to forget that flings can be these gentle, fluid things instead of blunt instruments that optimally jank Bosh into a new force vector. Maybe it was a symptom of working in the line rider app, but the gentleness of the flings and chains on display in Motty’s track feels like sipping a cool drink on a hot day. Paired with a vibey song about California or whatever, Motty manages to nail a distinctly summer-y tone—perfect for the month of June. Maybe it’s just personal preference talking, but now that we’re not flooded with this sort of stuff all the time, I think I’d like to see more of these flowy quirk tracks in the world. And hey, quirkers with a particularly retro strain of the Line Rider brainworms, maybe try giving the app a try sometime? Maybe it’ll help you capture that old-school vibe without sacrificing some of those newer Line Rider quality-of-life features.
The Moon - Leonis
Review by September:
The Moon is the latest release from Leonis, a long-time Line Rider community member who has worked under a variety of names and who has left a significant marks on this community’s history—the often-misunderstood “kramual,” for example, is named after one of her previous aliases. And in this vein, The Moon seems to be Leonis’ attempt to return to one of these earlier worlds of Line Rider, having unbound the frame advance/reverse hotkeys in Line Rider Advanced and recorded the track in a Flash build of the game. And I think I agree with her assessment that this experiment was successful in shifting the her movement away from quirk tracks that often feel more like computer optimization problems or playaround TASes and back towards something closer to the movement arts. This is especially in the slower sections—if I compare this track to Pointy Wobbly Italian Rat, another of Leonis’s recent releases, the lower-speed sections of The Moon feature bouncier movements and more holistically-considered movements which are more pleasant to watch on a visceral level, as opposed to the apparent “frame jank” that you can pick up on in Pointy Wobbly Italian Rat and which introduces texturally unpleasant notes to the work. The first half of the track feels really well considered, and if not straight-up music-synced, at least thoughtfully vibe-matched.
However, I think the success of this project dries up a bit when we get to the second half the track, where, after a long air-time section, Leonis enters a high-speed flingquirk section which she remains in until the final stall. In general, I’m not very impressed or drawn to these sorts of permutational repetitive highspeed fling sections because they don’t tend to actually look all that fast in an unscened environment like Line Rider’s infinite white void, but rather like a kind of static-still jittering. Furthermore, as far as I can tell no attempt was made to music-sync this higher-intensity section with the music, which remains at the same sort of mellow-ed out vibe that it had at the start, where Bosh was moving with much less speed. And ultimately, I think I enjoy Pointy Wobbly Italian Rat more than “The Moon” because Pointy Wobbly Italian Rat’s high speed sections are music synced in a rather fun and distinctive way, having Bosh kramual in time with the vocalist’s high pitched squeaks—as well as possessing a lot more music-synced detail in the high-speed sections in general. Perhaps The Moon was not intended to be music synced, but I don’t see any limitations in Leonis’s workflow that would disallow music sync, and the tonal mismatch between the movement and the music in this sections is noticeable enough that it would prompt to criticize it even if syncing was not a goal of the piece.
But based on Leonis’s reflections on the work, it seems that the track was a total success for her and her goals to recenter herself within her creative process, which I think is probably more important than any complaints I might have as a critic. I hope, though, that as Leonis experiments further with her process, she discovers more ways to create thoughtful and expressive forms of movement art—perhaps a sort of hybrid process where she makes slower sections without frame advance, and then goes all out in the faster sections? And I always would love to see what a quirker like her would do if she combined her technical chops with light scenery or visualizer elements in order to enhance the movement or the sync.
Myth - RatherBeLunar
Review by September:
Myth is a new track created by RatherBeLunar, also known as Luna, who is a longtime Line Rider community member and quirker who helped develop Line Rider Advanced: Community Edition, one of the children of the Line Rider Advanced branch of the Line Rider version evolutionary tree—and, crucially, she should NOT be confused with Cura, also also known as Luna, who is also a longtime Line Rider community member and quirker and who is the developer and namesake of LRLuna, another of Line Rider Advanced’s evolutionary children (which was definitely NOT a mistake the first five times I watched this track or anything, haha). Myth falls into that classic subgenre of “Using the high speed frame by frame animation to fake the appearance of slower Line Rider movement”—one perhaps most famously demonstrated by iPi’s Falling to the Beat and repeated a number of times in tracks like CrazyGameMaster’s Interluden and for brief flashes in quirk megacollabs like Frequency Hotline. So what unique ideas does RatherBeLunar contribute to this storied subgenre? Well, what we end up finding is a take on this kind of track that does introduce ideas which play with the conventions of high-speed animation, but does so in such an understated manner that their impact fails to be really felt for me—which, for me, seems like a massive missed opportunity when the effort involved in producing this kind of effect is quite high, but allows you to essentially bend the physics of the game to your will, like the gravity-defying minigames of Interluden or the satisfaction of watching the cartoon hand adjusting Bosh’s manual in Falling to the Beat.
Perhaps the most remarked-upon feature of this track is a kind of subversion of the conventions of high-speed animation, which frequently features a tumble which gradually slows Bosh down and brings her back to standard speeds and standard physics. RatherBeLunar copies this tumble, ending the rider’s movement in an apparent stall. Ah, but wait! This whole ending was itself, an illusion—animated ending text appears, and the camera reveals that the tumble and the stall themselves were but tricks of the animator’s light! Which is… on an intellectual level, I guess it’s kind of cool? But I feel like more could have been done than simply animating some text to surprise the viewer with the stall fakeout. Worst of all is that the track does actually end with this fake stall, which makes the whole idea of the fake-out feel rather pointless—why fake us out if you were going to end there anyway? I feel something like that would be best placed in the middle of the track as a kind of ‘false ending’, placed amongst other animation tricks which alter the audience’s spatial and physical perceptions.
Other effects include the smooth appearance and disappearance of moving track lines, illusions which play with the speed and direction of Bosh’s movement, and mimicking some minor quirks of Line Rider’s physics engine. It’s all pretty subtle stuff, and it’s clear that RatherBeLunar put in quite a bit of effort to MAKE these effects only a little bit off from Line Rider’s standard physics. This is kind of “a thing” in quirk spaces—using advanced techniques which entirely disguise what it is that the trackmaker is even doing, making it indistinguishable from standard Line Rider movement. This is a bit of an impulse I don’t entirely understand—if you’re gonna do something so high-effort, why not play it up and create a unique effect that couldn’t be done in any other way OTHER than that technique? I think this is, on one hand, symptomatic of my general resistance to effortcore approaches to Line Rider, while also part of my broader desire to see new and unique ideas being explored in this silly thing we call an “art medium.” To put it another way: “I know trackmakers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards.”
Additionally, if we step back from the minutiae of the Myth’s effects and look at the work holistically, I’m not really sure what mood or tone RatherBeLunar is trying to convey with her choices of music and visuals. The emotional tone of Falling to the Beat and Interluden are both abundantly clear, with both music and visuals tuned to convey their respective emotional landscapes. Meanwhile, Myth feels more confused, to me; the Beach House song to which it is synced seems to be about moving on from a relationship, and is generally moody and downbeat, while the Line Rider track uses tricks that feel like they’d be better suited for a more playful or disorienting song. And before the big transition into the frame animated section, the movement has several moments that feel quite disconnected from the music, moving at quite a high speed in comparison to the downtempo music and with several moments where I struggle to identify any music sync whatsoever. The movement and tricks in this track don’t feel to me to be pointing towards any greater theme or emotion—perhaps other than some light surprise at some of the twists and turns of the animated tricks. This tonal inconsistency carries over even into the end, which concludes with the lyric “what comes after this?”, and, as if in response, the video promptly cuts to black. Which, I suppose, is funny? But it also feels like it undercuts the track, and the broader tone of the song which the track uses to back its movement. The end result is a track that has some interesting conceptual ideas, but ultimately leaves me feeling cold. But I’m very interested to see whatever RatherBeLunar chooses to create next in Line Rider—especially if she applies her clear technical talent towards conveying cohesively-considered narratives and emotions through music sync.
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy - Csquare
Review by September:
It is fitting that Csquare, a self-professed “lover of classical music from the womb” has recently been on a bit of a classical music kick in terms of his Line Rider releases—specifically in the form of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and his more recent Can Can. Unlike Csquare, I must confess that I am not a lover of “classical music,” at least in its popular conception. “Classical music” that enters mainstream awareness is often entirely stripped of its contextual meaning and becomes generic “smart music” that many people seem to enjoy only because it signals a very old and classist conceptualization of “aesthetic taste.” But of course, this kind of music doesn’t really signify the kind of exclusive, upper-class refinement people pretend it does, or else the most popular Line Rider tracks ever created wouldn’t be set to Beethoven’s Fifth and “In the Hall of the Mountain King”. What I’m saying is, folks are not out here setting their Line Rider tracks to Shoenberg or even Charles Ives but instead the same four songs that DoodleChaos already made into (much better) Line Rider tracks years ago. It all betrays the fact that most people who make Line Rider tracks set to classical music usually don’t actually like or listen to classical music all that much—or, at the very least, are not interested in understanding classical music beyond what has become mass-media-meme-ified. Artistic appreciation is not bound by ideas of class or intelligence, but a genuine desire to understand and love the world around them, the capacity to actually pay attention to the world around us and place it into an ethical and historical context.
Now that I’ve established that I am, tragically, some kind of double-pretentious classical music hipster, let’s actually talk about Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Unfortunately, right off the bat, this song has already been made into a track by DoodleChaos, and, for me, nothing in Csquare's take really beats the simple beauty of DoodleChaos juggling three riders in that twinkling bells section. On the other hand, in sharp contrast to DoodleChaos, Csquare’s prenatally-originated appreciation of classical music does shine through with a decent amount of sincerity and sensitivity to the music's history. Csquarey attempts to help the viewer locate a context for the titular “Dance,” including a portrait of the composer, information about the date of composition, and a drawing of the location in which the music was first performed. It’s all a bit loosely portrayed, though, and there are moments where these drawings and information simply fly by too quickly to be appreciated—which is emblematic with the simple broader issue that the riders in this track are just moving way too fast for what’s supposed to be an elegant ballet.
And really, I can tell that Csquare seems to care about the history of this music--but his own personal connection to the art is less immediately apparent. An unstated assumption of the track and all this historical framing is that “this music is important and you should pay attention to it,” and my gut response to that claim is, “Yeah, but, like, why do you think that? What do you love about this song in particular?”, which I feel like the track has a difficult time clearly answering. Based on Csquare’s “How Line Rider Transformed My Life” video, it’s very apparent to me that Csquare develops entire narrative and emotional arcs for the tracks he creates—but, sadly, he has trouble actually conveying those stories through the track itself. I understand the struggle, though—it can be hard to get an emotional feeling or story out of your body and actually into the work of art in a way that others can understand. But I certainly think that Csquare has the capacity to and absolutely should do more in these tracks to make these internal narratives more outwardly apparent to his audience.
One last note about this track: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy was clearly exported in a 4:3 aspect ratio, as opposed to the classic 16:9 format that most Line Rider tracks are exported in these days. I wonder why Csquare did this. Was it to evoke the aspect ratio of classic Line Rider tracks from the Flash era? Or is it because Csquare simply prefers 4:3 for some other kind of personal or aesthetic reason? 4:3 is generally associated with a less “cinematic” and more “personal” feel, which stands in contrast to the track’s broader goal of emphasizing the importance of the music. But it’s certainly an interesting idea: linerider.com lets you export your tracks in whatever aspect ratio you can think of, and it’s definitely an underexplored avenue for creative approaches to Line Rider. I guess, If I was to wrap up this review, I would suggest that I think I see and appreciate what Csquare is trying to do, but I simply want him to take it all further: get weirder with the song selection, get weirder with the way historical and emotional context is portrayed, get weirder with the aspect ratio. This is perhaps my challenge to all Line Rider creators I know: get weirder, take it further, and explore new possibilities.
(and also can somebody actually please make Charles Ives’s “The Unanswered Question” in Line Rider that would be so cool)
Line Rider…but with realistic sound effects - SamuelWZN
Review by September:
The core premise of this track is one that’s already done a number of times in tracks like Malizma’s Bosh goes mountain biking and Techdawg’s tonally-fraught classic Transcendental—and this track certainly doesn’t stand out in terms of its trackmaking—but adding sound effects to Line Rider is always an alluring prospect for the way it makes the rider’s movements feel physically grounded, giving a different kind of weight to each impact, and that sort of thing is often worth talking about. Line Rider…but with realistic sound effects leans into this by emphasizing Bosh’s bodily materiality, emphasizing the fatal drops they experience with a series of sickening crunches and Wilhelm-esque screams, from which I derive a kind of grim humor and satisfaction. But sound effects in Line Rider also carry a strange edge which feels as though it runs counter to the whole vibe of this thing we’re doing. Sound effects are also one of the most annoying elements of Line Rider 2: Unbound, in the form of Unbound-Bosh’s uncomfortably ecstatic cries of “Yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”. And the uncanniness of Unbound-Bosh’s more fleshy form, his capacity for speech, human motivation, and having a set gender identity are deeply repellent. Classic Line Rider’s Bosh is instead a kind of bodiless body, a vehicle for the beauty of physics simulation. Sound effects reinscribe Bosh into a body, and thereby opens Line Rider up to the sensory horror of living in a flesh prison. This is of course used mostly to both humorous and horrific effect—because humor and horror are often one and the same. But I wonder if it would be possible to explore new emotional dimensions with sound effects in contemporary Line Rider? The effect would have to be subtle, and that might mean the tradeoff between the required effort and the payoff might be too out of whack for anyone to pursue seriously. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is Chuggers’ saunter, which treats its sound effects as a kind of music sync set to a field recording rather than a genuine utilization of sound effects. Which is kind of the rub: perhaps music sync is all the SFX Line Rider will ever truly need. Broad statements about artforms is the bread-and-butter of making critics eat their words, however, and I look forward to the day someone meets this unsubstantiated challenge of mine and proves me wrong; I will happily chow down on a veritable lasagna of my misbegotten sentences.
FLASH ROUND
And now for the FLASH ROUND, which has always been called that, and has never been called any other name before this point. This is where I give short remarks on tracks I thought worthy to "shout out" but not review in the month of June. FLASH ROUND GO:
Everything seems better now sees Ammar shifting from making tracks set to Tyler the Creator’s music to syncing midwest-emo/punk music, and their work is probably better for it. The massive environmental zoom-out near the end is particularly effective. Hope they make more things exploring this vein in the future!
In the Air Tonight, the other release from “Anonymous” this month, feels a bit like a prototype for their subsequent release, Hurt. In it, we see Anonymous exploring a kind of slow-burn pacing for the broader track structure. Though I think the big moment where the tension building boils over into its “big” climax is a little lackluster, and feels a bit too polished, I appreciate Anonymous’s attempt to approach Line Rider creation with a clear emotional arc in mind.
Hadal abek by °*•Cᴿᴬᶻᵞ Gᴬᴹᴵᴺᴳ•*° (not to be confused with CrazyGameMaster) is a simple little dual rider track using classic caves-and-cliffs scenery elements. Perhaps most notably, it is synced decently well to “Hada Ahbek”, a song by Palestinian-Jordianan songwriter Issam Alnajjar, whose song went viral on TikTok a while back. I think tracks set to non-anglophone music are worth celebrating—especially ones that are made by groups that are being systematically oppressed and colonized—so I thought the track was worth shouting out here.
Mein Line Rider falls firmly in the category of “track that someone put a lot of effort drawing but didn’t bother to adding music to.” And a lot of these drawings are pretty sick! Blimps, massive eyes, takes on the classic line rider trope of the “shoddily-constructed loop-de-loop.” Just a shame it doesn’t have any music to go with it.
Spider Dance is one of a high number of Undertale-OST tracks that myan01 made this month that are mostly kind of forgettable. This one, however, had a fun bit where Bosh really smoothly rides the perimeter of a pentagon, and it was so neat I thought it was worth shouting out.
Thanks for reading!
Line Rider Review YouTube Channel
Support the Line Rider Artists Collective on Ko-Fi
Apply to Join the Line Rider Artists Collective