Hi, we're OTDE and Rabid Squirrel and these are our top ten Line Rider tracks released
in 2017.
If you want to watch these tracks without commentary, click the playlist up above or
down below.
Alright, let's go!
10. Mitosis by Opal Rider
To start this list off, we have a track Opal
Rider created for the 2017 track jam, a community line rider event where complete tracks were
made over the course of a two-day period.
As a creator, Opal rider is known for making tracks with extremely fluid movement, and
this translates well into Mitosis, which applies these skills towards fleshing out an interesting
concept.
Like the name suggests, Mitosis is about division and replication.
Starting from a single line, the track uses audio cues to signal a jump, as lines split
and carry Bosh down one of the paths.
What's especially interesting is how Opal will hide gravity wells in some of the lines,
so that Bosh doesn't interact with the lines in ways you'd expect.
In some places, Bosh will hang by the tail of the sled; in others, he'll bounce between
them.
To me, the strongest parts of the track are where Opal adheres to the central concepts
he presents at the outset of the track: splitting lines and making Bosh follow the paths in
ways that subvert your expectations.
It sort of falls apart when you see other small lines introduced, as they kind of break
those initial guidelines without adding anything meaningful to the track.
That being said, the conceptual creativity and solid execution, not to mention the tight
production timeline, land this track a spot in our top 10 list.
9. Neon Rider by Helios
The most interesting thing about Neon Rider
is how it defies categorization as a "track", taking post-production to extremes we've
not seen before in Line Rider.
In Neon Rider, different instruments are visualized via the movements of individual color-coded
Boshes placed alongside each other on a black screen.
Inspired by the game with which it shares a title, Neon Rider is a music-visualizer
video-art experiment that raises intriguing questions about the value of Line Rider as
a tool for choreography and music syncing as well as the value of potential usage of
Line Rider in larger video art pieces.
Confining the Boshes to left-to-right horizontal movement and confining each one to a specific
color-coded instrument keeps the concept clear and cohesive, a vital component of a work
that's so far from a standard Line Rider track and one that is handled quite well.
Granted, there's not much there to engage the average viewer and get them to become
invested in any meaningful way, but it deserves a spot on this list for exploring new artistic
ideas with enormous potential for future Line Rider works.
Neon Rider is certainly a unique endeavor, and I might even go so far as to call it a
groundbreaking artistic experiment - whether it is or not only time will tell.
8. Mind Mischief by Yobanjojoe
This one feels like it wouldn't have been
out of place had it been released several years ago.
Granted, the scenery styles and themes are all over the place and the work lacks any
consistent worldbuilding, but most of the scenery ideas are highly creative.
For example, in Mind Mischief we can watch Bosh ride vines around a hummingbird with
a waterfall in the distance, jump off a ramp emerging from the clouds to fly up to the
top of a tower, or fly off of a comet past a psychedelic drawing with eyes, arms, vines,
and a distant sailboat seen through a portal.
In short, this track is a trip!
The abstract, surreal nature of the work almost justifies the gravity-defying movements created
by the bare track, a rather predictable manuquirk made years ago by Z_N-Freak.
Still, it is my firm belief that we would do well to put the days of struggling to scene
unwieldy manuquirk tracks behind us, and focus on creating simultaneous decorations and movements
that work together in harmony, and I hope Yobanjojoe will apply his excellent psychedelic
art style to this approach in the future.
7. Surf by Hanuman
We have a relative newcomer holding down the
number seven spot with Surf, a jaunty little experimental piece by Hanuman.
Given how quickly Hanuman made it, I was surprised how much this work resonated with me.
The work is set to the "surf" music from the Pokemon series, which holds a special
place in my heart, and I'm happy to report that this track does the song justice.
What I'm especially struck by in this piece is how well Hanuman moves Bosh with respect
to the shape of the different notes in the music.
When the music is emphasizing each note in small bursts, you can see Bosh speed up suddenly.
It evokes the same kind of wave-riding I imagined when I would play Pokemon as a kid.
It uses a lot of unusually shaped curves and loops to achieve that same sort of rollicking,
bouncing motion, but the track loses me when it uses rising horizontal lines and straight
lines to try and achieve the same effect.
These are good ideas on their own, but in the context of this piece they can feel somewhat
out of place.
That aside, the rest of the work is well-executed so I don't mind all that much.
It's a beautiful short piece from one of 2017's most promising new Line Rider artists.
6. The Wilderness by... these people
Disclaimer: I'm one of the people in this,
but I'm mostly hooting and hollering about the parts other folks made in this track.
In a couple words, this track is "old school."
The Wilderness is a throwback to a bygone era of Line Rider, one in which makers of
scenery tracks would attempt to marry classic, TechDawg-style worldbuilding with manuquirk,
a style that would become less and less sceneable as time passed.
The shading and detailing are appropriately minimal given the relative density of the
scenery, and the work does a decent job of making the world feel tangible, something
Bosh is interacting with and moving through, without falling into the trap of feeling overly
railroaded or deterministic.
This track fails, like all of the tracks from the era it evokes, when it attempts to reconcile
the track's shape with the scenery's aesthetic.
In this work in particular, smooth manuals and near-circular curves are difficult to
place in a jungle world, meaning sacrifices to artistic clarity were made because of the
track's restrictions.
What's important, though, is that it manages to worldbuild fairly well in spite of these
setbacks, earning it a spot on this list.
5. Anemoia by Helios
This is the rare Line Rider work that fills
me up inside with warm fuzzy feelings despite being shockingly simple.
The remarkably uncomplicated sledding makes Anemoia easy to overlook, and I'll admit
that I didn't think much of it on first watch, but boy did it grow on me.
It's really amazing how well pencil-scribble flatsledding at high speeds can match the
feel of a busy background groove in the music - I'm actually amazed that no one thought
of this technique before this release.
And then the structure of the work is top notch - starting off with smooth flatsledding
and progressively adding the pencil scribble, then syncing the bumps with the piano, and
then going highspeed, before finally ending the work how it began with more smooth flatsledding.
The moment where Bosh is slowly falling through through space and then suddenly lands, sledding
at breakneck speeds on pencil squiggles, consistently makes me smile and feel good about everything.
Ultimately, while Anemoia is not a terribly impressive accomplishment or bold statement,
it is one of the simplest Line Rider works that I've ever counted amongst my favorites,
and I think that speaks to the strength of the work.
For all of these reasons, Anemoia has clearly earned the number 5 spot on this list despite
its deceptively simple appearance.
4. The INNOTIO Year-End Message 2017 by rabid squirrel
It's extremely rare to get paid, commissioned Line Rider work, and artistically, it can
often be tricky business to walk the line between genuine artistic expression and shameless
corporate shillery.
Rabid Squirrel manages to make a genuinely impressive artistic piece here, however, by
successfully merging multiple styles of shading with a text-based narrative that matches the
scenery every step of the way.
A lot of these shading styles either weren't possible due to line density restrictions
in previous versions or because the precision required to make them was prohibitively time-consuming.
The cave section is a fresh and inventive take on the genre, and the music note terrain
is a neat callback to community scenery project from a couple of years ago.
The narrative itself is a bit campy, and it's a message that was built to resonate with
literally only the employees of INNOTIO, which means that almost everyone who watches this
track should probably go into it with the understanding that it wasn't exactly made
for them?
But the creative shading, effective juggling of multiple worldbuilding methods and styles,
and solidly built narrative are more than enough to put this track into the top 10 on
its own merits.
3. Dangerous Cargo by OTDE
This groundbreaking work by OTDE reaches into
the relatively untrodden land of storytelling in Line Rider, and comes up with something
undeniably fresh, innovative, and entertaining.
The track itself is bookended by sections utilizing heavy post-production.
The use of night mode to evoke space is undoubtedly effective, and raises important questions
about the value of Line Rider mods as tools for creating art.
Likewise, the practice of creating short clips with Line Rider for use in a larger video
art piece is very new, and thus OTDE's remarkably effective use of this technique raises more
questions about the best ways to use Line Rider as a tool for telling stories.
Philosophical questions about innovation aside, Dangerous Cargo tells a compelling narrative
that, while at times confusing and vague, certainly manages to grab the viewer and get
them invested in Bosh's fate, and it does this in under two minutes, an impressive feat.
Additionally, the central track itself is possibly the best modern example of scenery
decoration matching the music, and, unlike OTDE's 2016 scenery-heavy release The Gorge,
contains some of the best examples of harmonious integration of track and scenery in Line Rider
history.
It's clear that the track and scenery in Dangerous Cargo were created simultaneously
and this translates into one of the work's greatest strengths.
That, along with the compelling narrative and groundbreaking art techniques, easily
lands Dangerous Cargo the number 3 spot on this list.
2. Mountain King by DoodleChaos
I probably overuse the phrase "mic drop",
but if any track deserves to be described as such it is this one.
I mean seriously, this was DoodleChaos's debut track, he made it within two months
of discovering Line Rider, and it was almost certainly the most viral Line Rider video
of all time.
How did this happen?
Well, the video starts simple enough that it is able to serve as an introduction to
Line Rider, before building to a climax that is both hilarious and wildly dramatic.
Combine this with the satisfaction of watching Bosh's movements sync up perfectly with
an extremely well-known piece of music, add some tasteful musical-notation themed scenery
decorations, and you've got a smash hit in gaming circles and classical music circles
that anyone who enjoys visuals synced with music is also able to appreciate.
Pack this in under three minutes and you've got an entertaining and wholesome viral video
that gets millions of views on YouTube and Facebook.
This track on its own is unlikely to affect anyone in a deep meaningful way, but it was
able to reach millions of people and brighten their day for a couple minutes, and that accomplishment
has wide-reaching ramifications that will likely shake up the Line Rider community in
a big way going forward, and this makes it our second favorite track release of 2017.
Finally at #1, This Will Destroy You by Rabid Squirrel
Good lord, how do I begin to describe this one?
It stands out so distinctly from everything else here that it's kind of staggering.
Described by rabid as a "Line Rider feature film," This Will Destroy You is a long-form
Line Rider piece set to This Will Destroy You's self-titled album.
I should stress this: not a song, an album.
This is a 50-minute film.
In the vein of Fantasia-styled synchronized animation, This Will Destroy You consists
of seven non-narratively based vignettes contained within a single track, with a focus on matching
the various tones and colors of the music in thematic ways.
The sheer length of each song gives rabid the space to explore and build a library of
visual leitmotifs, and as the track goes on, rabid draws from inspirations new and old
alike to achieve powerful, visually stunning effects.
At times, the track is cluttered and dense, expanding as the music builds in intensity.
At other times, it's full of raw, visceral emotion as grungy guitars grind mercilessly
in the background.
At still other times, it is quiet and meditative as the music is ponderous, soft, all-encompassing.
Rabid is able to walk the pathways the music presents with an incredible effectiveness,
and the result is a work so expansive, so innovative, so complete, that I can with full
confidence call this my favorite track of 2017.
Thanks for watching our picks for the Top 10 Line Rider tracks of 2017!
You can find the playlist of all of these tracks sans commentary in the description
below.
Leave a comment and let us know what you thought about our choices.
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