Line Rider
Draw freehand lines and watch a tiny scarf-wearing sledder named Bosh ride them, obeying nothing but momentum and gravity. No goal, no score, no way to win — just physics and creativity in a browser. It was a toy, not a game, and that was exactly the point.
Slovenian student Boštjan Čadež (online handle fšk) uploaded Line Rider to his deviantART account on September 23, 2006. The concept was deceptively simple: draw freehand lines and a tiny sledder rides them. There was no objective, no score, no win condition — Čadež himself insisted it was a toy, not a game. The magic happened on YouTube, where players screen-recorded elaborate tracks; the recordings totaled 15 million views by December 2006, fueled by a surge of attention from Digg that fall.
It won Best Webtoy of 2006 from Jay is Games and earned coverage from Time. Boxed versions followed in fall 2008 on Nintendo DS, Wii, and Windows, and the little sledder even appeared in McDonald's commercials. A physics doodle in a browser window had become something much bigger.
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