Line Rider is a very smart game with very simple rules. You have the rider, the gravity, the white space, and the possibility to draw lines. The rider is thrown in the white space, the gravity attracts the rider towards the bottom, and the lines define the landscape that influences the path of the rider. Your job is to design and build the path.

Here is my 13 seconds ride after half an hour of work:

I like very much the ideas behind the game. For one, a line has two sides. You bump on one side and get through the other. How is that for imagination?! This very simple twist enables you to create unexpected scenarios. For example, at the end of my movie, the rider goes through one side of a line and then bumps on the other side.

Another reason why I like the game is that I cannot influence the rider directly. I can only build the environment, and the experience comes from the intersection of the rules of the game and my design. That is very much what a presentation is. I can only design the environment with sounds and visuals, while the experience comes from the intersection of your rules and my design.

Yet another reason I like is that it pushed me to try, error and then try again. I did that until it pretty much did what I wanted. Yes, I know mine does not do much. Actually, it does not do exactly what I wanted it to, but after a while I started to like what I got and settled with that.

Here is a more elaborated ride built by someone else:

(You can find more such examples here)

You might notice how this example is a tiny bit more complex than my 30 minutes effort. You might also notice how their ride has a meaning, as opposed to mine. Both movies are loaded on YouTube: mine is called Simple Line Rider, and the other one is called Line Rider - Urban Run. Which one do you think has a better chance of being noticed and remembered?

The bottom line: I settled, they did not. Of course, I could say that they had a commercial interest, and of course I could say I did not have the time, or even that I did not have the tools. But, if what counts is your experience, my ride is irrelevant and I lose by a large margin.

You can always find reasons to settle. While settling can be just fine, just don’t mistake the reasons for excuses.

What you do with what is given to you is entirely up to you.