Linia Stripes was the first title in the Linia series. I’ve already covered its indirect sequel Linia Super and this game came before it. You can see its foundational seeds but this game is an almost clicker-like mindless puzzle game that leans into artsy wallpaper generator featuring designs you could wallpaper a house with in the 1970s or generate psychedelic rock album art with.
Each puzzle is procedurally generated from various squiggly lines or artsy line designs. Linia Stripes then places one of its around 200 line styles or effects on top of it. Your aim as the player is to remove each line starting with the shortest, working your way to the longest. Some designs take literally five seconds to complete, others may take up to maybe 30 seconds. At all times the artwork looks snazzy, jazzy and retro cool. You score points for each level completed and those points then unlock the next of those 200ish line styles or patterns. The more patterns you unlock, the more Linia Stripes generates interesting or new mash ups of designs and line styles. Early on in the game you’ll be unlocking new patterns every few minutes.
As the game progresses, it’ll maybe take 15 minutes to unlock something new. What is undeniable is how the drip feed of new information and deciding what pattern you’d like to unlock next incentivises the player to keep going even if the game isn’t challenging. Aside from a few patterns being quite tricky initially to work out what line it is you are meant to click on, my main complaint is that the points collection screen is a bit slow and can’t be sped up. That means you might spend 15 seconds on a puzzle but then 8-10 seconds on a score screen. That wouldn’t be an issue if the speed of which you clear things was so fast but it does stick out a bit here.
The second part of Linia Stripes is what makes the game stand out and feel unique. Each pattern you unlock can be pulled into a wallpaper mode that allows you to generate new full screen designs which you can screenshot and alter, swapping out designs or layouts at a click of a button. I would have loved to steer the generation towards either a complex or a sparse design but a few refreshes usually brings up something nice. From that perspective, Linia Stripes is a fantastic psychedelic art generator and I could see it being used as cover art or banner art for rock or synth bands for example.
Whilst the game itself isn’t hugely engaging, I did find it addictive in the same way a clicker game can be. The more you play, the more you unlock, the more you see. Its low key addictive and I found myself unlocking a few designs and then parking it, to come back a few days later and do the same thing again. Short fire bursts of gameplay work best for Linia Stripes and whilst this is an incredibly niche title, there is an audience out there that will find this oddly satisfying to play.
Review copy provided by developer. Out now on Steam.
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