The second Linia game continues the series’ exploration of abstract puzzle games and this one focuses on colour sequences. It is a hypnotic abstract pattern game that feels both like a casual puzzle game and also a hypnotic art piece. This won’t be for everyone (what is), but if you enjoy artsy geometric designs, you’ll find Linia Super particularly interesting.
In Linia Super you are given a colour sequence at the top of the screen. The rest of the screen is then a warping, moving and sometimes reactive pattern. Your task is to draw a single line through the pattern to match the colour sequence. This means that as patterns move, shuffle or shift perspective as you move your mouse, you’ll be working out not only where to draw your line but also when to let go of the mouse button to make sure the pattern and colour sequence match. It is something that starts out incredibly simple but then as you try out different level types, Linia Super starts to include more complex patterns and shapes to time you movement to. Sometimes you’ll need to think like a Monument Valley style impossible shape maker to see what’s required. Other times you’ll need to think creatively to draw the line and sometimes ignore most of the level and focus on what’s required.
There’s over 220 levels in Linia Super and you can play half of them immediately in any order you choose. They are broken into theme sets so there will be different shape or pattern types, grey scale levels, gravity levels where things tumble down the screen and so on. Once you clear these in normal mode, which is usually quite easy, you then unlock the Hot Mode. This adds additional colours to the sequence and much more movement or shape complexity into the level. It’s Hot Mode that provides all the games challenge as I was blasting through the normal levels until that point. Indeed, if Linia Super was just the normal mode, I’d have not really stopped playing and completed the game in under an hour. Hot Mode is far trickier and will add several more hours to the mix.
Graphically, Linia Super is striking and at times hypnotic. Seeing abstract and geometric shapes morph and shift draws you in, although some colour palettes can be quite hard on the eyes. The ambient soundtrack aims to keep you calm but your calmness will depend entirely on how light your mouse fingers are. Whenever you start to draw a line, you can’t cancel it and so if you let go to redraw something quickly, you won’t be able to. Instead you’ll get the error noise and a couple of seconds to wipe your drawing before you can go again. This can make Linia Super feel a bit slow at times when you have longer patterns that take a good 15-20 seconds to loop around. It’s a minor quibble in an otherwise solid game design.
Whilst this type of game feels quite casual, it also feels quite niche. I personally enjoyed all the visual elements and that definitely bumped up my overall rating. I also like timing based gameplay but that could make casual puzzle games who want to solve logical puzzles feel a bit alienated from it. See my gameplay footage in the review video to see if its lenient enough for you to enjoy before purchasing. A quirky title with plenty of levels and style, I think a niche section of artsy puzzle gamers will love this. Gamers who like being given a set of open ended rules that allow for loads of solutions to the same level will enjoy Linia Super too. My main takeaway here was sometimes without structure, the player can make a level far more complicated than it needed to be but that was half the fun too.
Review copy provided by developer.
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