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15
Sep
08

Line Rider iRide in App Store, $2.99


A month ago, the Line Rider clone, Flying Rider was told to cease and desist by InXile Entertainment. Now the official Line Rider for the iPhone and iPod Touch is available in the App Store, called Line Rider iRide ($2.99).

Line Rider iRide allows you to create tracks with your fingers, and then test the track out with Bosh, the sled rider, with full-on physics in play. You can save and load tracks, and share them online with the official site for others to enjoy. Plus you can download other’s tracks, play, and rate them. You can enable magnet for lines to snap together, invert menus (default on top, invert puts it on bottom), gravity tilt (uses the accelerometer to affect the ride), draw and pan (so you don’t have to constantly use the hand tool.)

Tools available to be used in Line Rider iRide are:

  • Pencil (in red, blue, or green)
  • Line (red, blue, or green)
  • Eraser
  • Undo
  • Zoom
  • Hand (to move around)
  • Play
  • Flag (save rider’s current position)
  • Save/Load Track
  • Delete track

For an impressive example of Line Rider in action from the web-version of the game, check out the video below:


2
Sep
08

Line Rider Coming to iPhone


It’s been speculated, but now it’s official; inXile Entertainment, developers of Line Rider, will be bringing the game to the iPhone and iPod Touch. After the hullaboo regarding Flying Rider, I emailed inXile Entertainment to see if they planned on bringing Line Rider to the iPhone themselves. I never received a response, but today they released a press release making it known.

Line Rider for the iPhone will be priced at $2.99, and will feature the ability to upload and download tracks from the official Line Rider website.

“We have over a million visitors to LineRider.Com every month and our strong and vocal audience has been asking for an iPhone(TM)/ iPod Touch(TM) version of Line Rider ever since the touch interface was introduced,” said Brian Fargo, chief executive officer of inXile entertainment Inc. “Line Rider is a natural fit for the iPhone as mobile users will be able to share their tracks and ride the lines almost anywhere now.”


14
Aug
08

Flying Rider Development No More


Not more than 24 hours after reporting about the availability of Flying Rider in the App Store, the developer of the game will be ceasing developing of Flying Rider and it will be removed from the App Store. The reason is that the developer of Line Rider, of which Flying Rider is based upon, has been sending daily emails to the developer of Flying Rider, telling him he does not have the right to make Flying Rider available in the App Store.

The 15 August, Flying Rider will be removed from the App Store has inXile required it. I receive one mail per day attacking me for rights reasons… It’s very boring, so I decide to stop everything. Sorry for you guys. Understand that I have put money and time on this project, it’s hard for me too… But the sharks always win…

Flying Rider will no longer be available after tomorrow. This begs the question, does the developer of Line Rider, inXile Entertainment, plan on releasing their own version of Line Rider for the iPhone/iPod Touch, thus the reason for all this?


7
Aug
08

Where is Flying Rider?


Back in early July, a demo was shown on YouTube of an upcoming port of the incredibly popular PC and mobile game, Line Rider. This version for the iPhone/iPod Touch is called Flying Rider, and has been highly anticipated by many fans of the game.

An alpha version of the game was shown on July 9th, and it looked good in such an early state. The developer recently announced on August 1st that the game is 1.0 and was released to Apple for review. Below is a gameplay video of version 1.0 in action:

Unfortunately, today the developer was told by Apple that there were mistakes and that they couldn’t approve the game for sale in the App Store.

At this time, Flying Rider cannot be posted to the App Store because it exhibits the following issues that need to be addressed.There is no indication that an item has been selected in the tab bar. That is, the displayed icons do not change color or shade to show the current selection status. Also, the tab bar is displayed at the top of the screen rather than the bottom (which is the standard recommended placement).

It’s nice to see Apple are on top of apps, making sure they are up to their quality standards. Oh wait, no they’re not. Be sure to check out the developer’s YouTube page for more videos of Flying Rider in action.

Update: In related news, TUAW has an excellent article looking into Apple’s review process.