Line Rider Race #2 – Who will survive Flight of the Valkyries? [video]

Every time I watch these I wonder about the process behind creating them. There is so much going on and this is a case where there is all this complexity hiding under the surface in order to present something so simple and elegant.

* Simply keeping the rider on the sled and moving, which for those who have played is not a simple task for a beginner

* Synchronizing it to the music

* The artistic selection of what to show when and where, and getting all of the pieces in place, for example keeping things off screen but nearby until they are needed, and then positioning their velocity vector to just match what you need

* The simple task of managing the artifact which is the course itself; how do you manipulate it and move it around and know precisely where to put a line for a given effect

* The intimate knowledge of the underlying physics at play in Line Rider

Surely there is some sort of software-assissted level editor for Line Rider out there? How much of the level is worked out backwards from the desired velocity and position of a given character?

Frankly it is not dissimilar from writing code at a modern company. At first you think your job is to write code, then you learn that a successful project relies on orchestrating dependencies, teams, artifacts, build times, infrastructure, sweet talking, etc. And so much of it happens off screen!