Lightlines
Two to four riders share one field. You cannot stop, and every cell you cross stays lit behind you for the rest of the round. Touch any line, your own included, or the wall, and you are out. The last rider still moving takes the round, and the first to three rounds takes the match.
The field
- The field is 32 cells by 32, walled on all four sides, and 1024 cells in all. There is no wrapping around the edges.
- Each rider starts against one of the four sides, two cells in, facing across the field. The seed decides which side each player gets and whereabouts along it; at two players the two sides are next to each other rather than opposite, so the riders do not simply mirror one another.
- Riders move eight cells a second and never stop. You steer with the arrow keys, with W, A, S and D, or by swiping the field on a phone.
- Every cell a rider leaves stays lit in that rider's colour for the rest of the round. Your line is the whole path you have taken, it never shortens, and it is the thing everybody has to get around.
- You cannot turn back on yourself. Your own line is directly behind you, so a reverse would put you straight into it; the game refuses it rather than letting you type your way out of the round.
The round
- A round opens with a three-second countdown. Nobody moves until it has run.
- Touch the wall and you are out. Touch any lit cell and you are out, whether the line is a rival's or your own.
- Two riders that enter the same cell on the same tick are both out, and so are two that try to swap places.
- Everything is decided from the field as it stood before the tick, so nobody gets an advantage from being drawn first.
- A rider who is out leaves its line exactly where it is. It stays lit for the rest of the round and it is still fatal to touch. Going out takes you out of the round; it does not take your line off the field.
- The round ends when one rider is left moving, and that rider takes it. If the last two go out on the same tick the round belongs to nobody.
How a game ends
- The first player to take three rounds wins the match.
- After nine rounds the match stops and the most rounds wins. Level at the top is a draw.
- A player who resigns is out of the match. At two players the other one wins; at three or four the match goes on without them and they are placed last.
- Every seat is live the whole time, so the site's move deadline of five minutes is only a dead man's switch: if nothing at all happens for that long, the match is abandoned and nobody is rated. A player who leaves in the middle is covered by the bot within half a second, and forfeits their seat after losing two whole rounds away.
Worth knowing before you start
- The server runs the field and decides everything. Your turn takes effect on the next tick, an eighth of a second, and the page draws your rider turning before the answer arrives so it feels immediate.
- Lightlines needs a live connection. If your browser or network cannot open one the page says so rather than offering a game that cannot move.
- The field fills up, and that is the game. A round is usually over inside half a minute, and a round can never outlast the field: every rider lights a fresh cell every tick, so the cells run out.
- Space is worth more than position. Cutting a rival off costs you nothing if you keep more room than they do, and the usual way to lose is to seal yourself into a pocket you cannot get out of. Most riders are ended by their own line, not by anybody else's.
- Because a line left by a rider who is out stays on the field, a round with three or four players gets harder after each one goes, not easier. The survivors inherit the wreckage.
- The bot plays at one of three strengths, drawn per match from the seed. All three look for the largest space they can reach; what separates them is how often they lose concentration, and the weakest of them loses it often.
The seed decides which side each player starts on and whereabouts along it, and nothing else: there is no food and no dice here, so a round follows entirely from the starting places and the steering. It is published when the match ends, so the whole match can be replayed from the log and checked.
Lightlines terms
- A line
- Every cell a rider has crossed. It stays lit for the whole round, it never shortens, and touching any of it puts you out, including your own.
- A round
- One field, from the countdown until one rider is left moving. A match is the first to three of them, and nine at the most.
- The countdown
- The three seconds at the start of a round. Everybody is placed and facing inward, and nobody moves until it has run.
- Out
- What happens when you touch a wall or a line. You stop playing that round; your line stays on the field and is still fatal to everybody else.