Solid Line
Draw a line. Press Go. Get the two of them to touch.
What it is
Two round characters sit somewhere on a level. You draw lines with a finger, press Go, and the world starts moving. Get the two of them to touch.
Levels in four tiers. Each one gives you a set number of lines — one, two or three — shown as tokens at the top. Undo takes the last line back and gives you the token again.
Your line stays where you put it
Lines are solid. They do not sag, topple or slide once drawn, which is the single rule the whole game runs on and it takes one sentence to explain.
Nothing moves until you press Go, either. You draw everything first, then watch it play out. That removes the dexterity from it entirely — nothing here is a reflex test, so whoever is standing at the screen starts on equal terms with everyone else.
Every level has been proved solvable
Each level ships with a worked solution, and before it was allowed in, that solution was replayed through the same physics the game uses. Not once — six times, at different line spacings and with the points nudged a couple of pixels either way.
A level that only comes out from one exact input is not solvable, it is lucky. Every level passes all six runs, and none of them solves itself if you draw nothing at all.
The tiers are measured, not guessed
Difficulty here is a number rather than an opinion. Five hundred random line placements are thrown at each level and the share that finish it is counted — that reading is what orders the tiers.
So the order you meet them in is the order they actually get harder, rather than the order they happened to be built in.
How to play
- Draw a lineDrag across the level
- Set it runningGo
- Take a line backUndo
- Start the level againRetry
You cannot draw on top of a character, and lines cannot be added once the run has started. Undo refunds the line, so trying something costs nothing.
On a desktop, click and drag to draw exactly as a finger does. Nothing is behind a key — the whole game is one gesture.
What it does not do
No score, no stars, no timer, no lives, no streak, no hints, no ads and no account. A level takes a few seconds to resolve, and if nobody touches it for ninety seconds it returns to the title and clears the board, so the next person finds a clean level rather than somebody else's half-drawn attempt.
What isn't settled yet
This is the one game here nobody recognizes on sight. Solitaire and mahjong arrive already understood; this one has to be understood in the first three seconds instead, and whether it manages that with nobody explaining is the open question.
Whether there are more levels than the rooms this is built for need, or whether the Expert tier is a tier too far.
Build Log
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Build 2
Levels are ordered by measurement now rather than by judgement. Five hundred random line placements are thrown at each one and the share that finish it is counted, and that reading sets the order. Hand-ordered, the tutorial came out at 0.67% against 14.83% for a level eight places later — the first level a player met was the hardest of the early set. Worth writing down: “I built these in increasing order” is an opinion, and this one was wrong.
Credits and licences
Built on matter-js, used under the MIT licence with the licence text reproduced in full in the shipped file. Typefaces are embedded under the SIL Open Font Licence, with their notice retained. Cover art was rendered from the game’s own drawing code.
Solid Line is original work by Launchway Games.