Goodbye, hobbies: Line Rider comes to iPhone

By Nate Lanxon on 01 October 2008, 11:15am

One of the most addictive online flash games -- Line Rider -- is now available on the iPhone and iPod touch, for an almost pathetically cheap £1.79.

For those not familiar with the sheer awesomeness that is Line Rider, let us summarise. You draw lines on a screen and a bloke wearing a scarf slides down them on a sledge. That's about it.

We're talking absolute minimalism here people, proving once again that the simplest ideas are often the best. Let's not forget previous simple ideas that went on to become hugely successful: sliced bread, words, and up until this year, banks.

In its iPhone incarnation -- predictably titled iRide -- Line Rider lets you create elaborate courses down which your scarfed gnome can merrily plummet to his demise. It takes full advantage of the iPhone's touchscreen, allowing you to draw free-form slopes and shapes with your finger.

All the classic tools are at your disposal too, including erase tools, zoom controls, flags for marking areas of your tracks that need further work, with full save and load options for saving your favourite tracks. You can also adjust the direction of gravity by tilting the iPhone.

Line Rider could well be the best game in the iTunes App Store, and will become for geeks what cocaine is for rock stars and Heat magazine is for stupid people.

Check it out at the iTunes Store here, or at least play the online version here.

And don't forget to peruse the most addictive flash games ever made, as compiled by our very own semi-skimmed Andrew Lim. -Nate Lanxon