[table]
[tr]
[th]GOAL[/th]
[td]Ensure your color covers more line territory than the enemy colors with the supplied tools in each level.[/td]
[/tr]
[th]EXPERIENCE[/th]
[td]Played puzzle games in general, but this is a one of a kind! Played the iOS version when it was pricedropped to free temporarily at one point years ago.[/td]
[tr]
[th]SETUP[/th]
[td]Played it in windowed mode.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th]CONTENT[/th]
[td]500 built-in levels made by the developers, separated into 6 level packs, with Point, Eraser, Rope, Knife, and Portal mode having 75 levels each, and Mixed mode having 125 levels. The first 5 level packs introduce a unique tool that the levels are designed around, while Mixed mode has remixed levels from previous packs but also new levels of which there are 2 or more tool types instead of 1 tool type.
There is a special game mode called Infinite, a endless score attack mode that uses all of the built-in levels on obtaining the highest win streak.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th]BOUGHT[/th]
[td]Got it for $1.69 during a sale on the 2021 Steam Summer sale.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th]ENDGAME[/th]
[td]Getting the final Steam achievement, 'Marathon', covering a 10,000 meter distance across all attempts while playing.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th]PLAYTIME[/th]
[td]1,504.5 minutes overall, or 25.075 hours upon completing the game on getting all Steam achievements. The time spent on the level editor is excluded, but had 9 hours making usermade levels and uploading them as of this review.
[list]
[*] Getting all gold on Point mode for 119.5 minutes.
[*] Getting all gold on Knife mode for 107.5 minutes.
[*] Getting all gold on Rope mode for 122 minutes.
[*] Getting all gold on Eraser mode for 91 minutes.
[*] Getting all gold on Portal mode for 79 minutes.
[*] Mix mode for 73 minutes.
[*] Post-game, getting all gold on Mix mode for 172.5 minutes.
[*] Most of the remaining Steam achievements, they are in order: 'Daytripper', 'The big 50', '100!', 'Epic Fail' and 'Frequent Flyer' for 124 minutes.
[*] The final Steam achievement, 'Marathon', while playing Infinite mode for fun for 426 minutes.[/list][/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
[b]My positives[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]There's a dark theme mode option, to switch from the default light theme mode[/b]; personally used this predominantly while playing!
[*] [b]The game has a built-in tracking system on each level, including custom levels, on having the amount of wins, losses, plays, and even the win streak; this also applies to the win percentage of 6 level packs.[/b]
[*] [b]Usermade levels can be created and uploaded to the Steam Workshop for other people to share and play![/b]
[*] [b]The colorblind setting of applying distinct shapes on the colored dots is good not only for colorblind people, but for people having difficulty distinguishing two or more similar colors in a level.[/b][/list]
[b]My negatives[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Sometimes failing a level is due to a mix of luck and difficulty on finding a viable solution;[/b] personally, level 27 in Point mode, and level 51 in Rope mode were my biggest pain points for me.
[*] [b]There's no easy percentage of the ratio between wins and losses on each level the game keeps track of;[/b] the statistics are there, but no auto-converting percentage wise.
[*] [b]While using the level editor, the game crashes at random regardless of simplicity or complexity;[/b] even with saving of in-progress level work, when saving something while having a reference image, that upon reloading it, only the reference image isn't saved. Likely, I just start over because it's too tedious to realign the reference image to the set up lines.
[*] [b]There's no way to delete in-progress user level files during the game[/b]; can't find a way to delete them outside of the game as far as I know. While a minor nitpick, sometimes I wanna have a clean slate when I don't need to check those usermade levels I made anymore when I already uploaded them.
[*] [b]The level editor gets more laggy the more line nodes are added in a in-progress usermade level;[/b] one of the things I wanted to do is to make kinda complicated line art that would take time to think about and plan with the given tools in order to finish the levels deviated from the built-in levels, but sadly, the game starts to lag with more line nodes added, with mouse clicks and drags taking longer to respond.
[*] [b]Usermade levels take longer to load when wanting to play them compared to the built-in provided levels made by the developers;[/b] To test this, I recreated 30th level in the Mix mode, 'Traffic', the re-created usermade level still takes time to load, whereas playing the built-in level instead loads with no delay. My educated guess is that custom levels are handled differently from built-in levels when finding a valid solution, varying the amount of time. This is unfortunate when wanting to make or play usermade levels, that even levels similar to what the developers made, it still results in variable loading times. This most likely explains the relative low amount of usermade levels since game release, since as of this review, 72 usermade levels, of which I uploaded 12 of them.
[*] [b]Usermade levels are less likely to be played due to a lack of special mode for them compared to built-in levels which has the Infinite mode;[/b] I played Infinite mode to get the 'Marathon' Steam achievement without downloading a usermade level to speed up the process, and there has been a lack of usermade levels during the mode since I downloaded some of them through subscribing. Incase the usermade levels exclusion from Infinite mode is intentional, I feel there should some kind of special mode for the usermade levels. I don't think a Infinite mode for usermade levels would work if the point of Infinite mode is getting the highest win streak from a grab bag of 500 built-in levels, since people can just inflate their best scores for a hypothetical special mode by just playing easy levels.[/list]
[b]My eehs/neutral feelings[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]I have no opinion on the Twitch integration functionality, and whether it works or not, since I am not a Twitch streamer.[/b]
[*] [b]Certain colors for the dots will change when using either the default light theme mode or dark theme mode;[/b] in the default light theme mode, dots that are colored black remain black, while in dark theme mode, dots that are colored black are instead colored white. This is something you'll have to plan around when making new usermade levels.[/list]
Lines is a unique take on the puzzle genre on with the given tools for each level, to plan out a solution to ensure your color covers more than the enemy colors. I enjoyed it for the most part despite the various caveats in terms of usermade level creation and playing, which was one of the main reasons why I bought the game years ago on wanting to play and make more levels. I do wish there were updates regarding making usermade levels less of a hassle and more fulfilling, since that's one of the main differences between the Windows version and the iOS version is the level editor only in the Windows version. The iOS version and the Android version of the game still occasionally gets updates, which might imply the game developer, Gamious, is still around and existing.
I wish I can strongly recommend people to buy this game if both enjoying this gameplay concept and want to make usermade levels alongside me, but as it is, if you want to play this game free of advertisements in comparison to the mobile versions of the game, I recommend getting the game for the unique gameplay. I'll still come back to it mainly to make more levels to upload to Steam Workshop, even favoriting this game on Steam, a rarity for me to do. This review is based on version 1.2.1.0, which I assume was released on November 12, 2019.
