LINERUN – One finger, one line, and fifty-seven ways for it to go wrong

Hold to run. That's the whole control scheme.

One finger does everything in this game, and the depth comes from when you lift it rather than from what else you could have pressed.

Instantly clear

Hold anywhere on the screen to run. Let go and you coast. In the air, holding starts a flip and letting go levels you out again – so the same gesture that drives you forward is also the one that decides whether you land on your wheels. There is nothing else to learn, no second button, no menu of moves. The first run lasts about twenty seconds and you'll already know exactly what killed you.

Fifty-seven parts, shuffled every run

The line ahead is assembled as you ride from fifty-seven hand-built track parts – loops, seesaws, kickers, springboards, forks, pipes, washboards, spans that collapse under you. They're drawn from a bag rather than a script, so the order changes every time, and a part only appears if you're carrying enough speed to survive it. The result is a line that feels authored rather than random, but that you can't memorise.

Flips pay, wipeouts don't

Land a flip and you get a burst of speed, so the greedy line is usually the fast one. Land badly and it's a wipeout: the run ends there, and your distance is the score. Hearts soften that – each one carries you through a single crash, and you can hold up to thirteen in reserve – but they don't make the landing any easier.

Ten seconds to understand, and still catching you out an hour later – which is the whole trick.

The line is not empty

Orbs to collect, words to spell, rivals to beat and something behind you that doesn't want you slowing down.

Spell a word, get a reward

Glowing letters are strung along the line, and picking them up in order spells one of three words. AURA gives you a boost, HERO gives you a shield that eats one crash, and MEGA gives you a mega boost. They're placed just far enough apart that collecting a whole word means committing to a fast, clean line through several parts in a row – which is exactly when the track starts throwing loops at you.

Rivals ahead, chasers behind

Sometimes three rivals pull alongside and the run turns into a race you can win outright. Other times you'll notice the screen tightening behind you: chasers close in when you lose momentum, and they will catch you if you keep coasting. Take the skateboard or the inline skates and they leave you alone entirely – one of several places where the vehicle you picked quietly changes the run.

Orbs, boost pads and perfect landings

Orbs sit along the line and pay for everything you'll buy later. Boost pads push you past your own top speed, which is thrilling for about a second and then becomes a problem. Perfect landings, double flips and triple flips are all tracked separately, so there's always a reason to take the harder version of a jump you've already cleared.

Every run is a negotiation between the distance you want and the speed it takes to get there.

Built to come back to

Between runs there's a shop, a collection, a season and a practice mode – and none of it asks for your money or your email address.

Fifteen vehicles and a collection of 147 cards

Orbs buy vehicles: bicycles, motorbikes, a skateboard, inline skates, a scooter, a BMX, a hoverboard and a hoverbike, each with its own handling. Card packs arrive as you ride – one is always on its way, either after enough distance or simply after enough time – and drop orbs plus cards from a pool of a hundred and forty-seven: rider colours, track line colours, trails, hats and shoes, in four rarities up to legendary. Packs open one card at a time, and tapping an owned card equips it.

Missions, a season, and mastering a colour

Ten mission chains run up to ten tiers deep – distance, flips, orbs, letters, words, races, perfect landings – and pay orbs the whole way. A season track of thirty tiers rolls over each month and ends in a finale where you pick one reward out of three. Ride a hundred kilometres in the same colour and you master it, which unlocks a version of it you can't get any other way.

School, Zen and Pro

If one part keeps ending your runs, School mode lets you practise it on its own, over and over, against a ghost of your own best time – and clearing every part in the game pays out properly. Zen mode removes the pressure and the rewards together, for when you just want to ride. Pro mode runs the physics at full speed rather than the gentler default pace, and keeps its own records and its own season track for people who find normal too forgiving.

Three different reasons to open the app, and none of them expire if you skip a day.

The bottom line: one more run

LINERUN takes an endless runner down to a single finger and then spends all its effort on what happens under that finger – a line built from fifty-seven hand-made parts, physics that reward the greedy landing, and a wipeout that's always your own fault. The track, the rider and every vehicle are drawn as vector art in code rather than shipped as sprite sheets, and all the music and sound ships inside the app, so nothing streams and nothing downloads: it plays in full on a plane or in a tunnel. There's no account, no sign-in, no analytics and no tracking – your progress lives on your phone and goes nowhere else. It's free with no in-app purchases, in English, German, Spanish, French, Indonesian and Portuguese, with fifteen vehicles, a hundred and forty-seven collectible cards, mission chains, a monthly season, colour mastery, School, Zen and Pro modes. Download LINERUN on Google Play and find out where your line ends.