xbox live indie game reviews

This is a relatively straight-forward puzzle game, similar in execution to Tetris.  Square tiles fall from the top center of the board with various directional line patterns drawn into them.  White squares can be rotated to open up a wider selection of connections while red squares must be placed as they are originally aligned.  At any point in which five or more lines connect, the tiles that contain them are destroyed.  This gives you points and increases the level.

In theory, the game is builty around trying to build up increasingly large combos to further improve upon your score.  Frustratingly however, the board is much wider than it is tall. When you begin to stack tiles more than a few high on the somewhat short board, it becomes increasingly difficult to navigate the next tile either onto your stack or beyond it to a farther column.  The game employs a similar fast-drop or fast-left/right mechanic as tetris to "quickly" navigate a tile around, but the next tile falls immediately upon placement of the first. This means you can easily make "mistakes" in placement of the next tile based on the direction of the previous tile.  This becomes especially problematic for lines, because some mistakes cannot be fixed.  If a tile with the wrong directions is placed inappropriately, it can effectively be stuck there until the end of the game.

There are some nice things about Lines.  The sound track is ambient and unobtrusive.  The starfield background and transparent playing grid are slick looking, as is the reflecting-pool affect at the bottom of the screen.  These visual perks however cannot overcome a lack of gameplay.  Verdict: Not worth the points.