Hollowline in one breath: you hold a finger on the screen, slide it sideways, and a glowing core
runs down a road that never stops. Touch a wall or a hazard and the run ends. This page covers what the game does not
spell out: how a graze is measured, how a Lumen Rush is lit, and what to expect from each world.
The controls, exactly
- One finger. Only its sideways position steers; moving it up or down does nothing.
- The road carries the core round bends for you. Your finger moves it across the road, so you do not have to
fight every curve.
- Lifting your finger does not end the run. The core keeps rolling at a little over half speed, which buys you time
to look, but a wall or hazard still ends the run, so do not rely on it for a squeeze.
- The core is drawn above your fingertip, so your thumb never hides the part of the road that matters.
What counts as a near miss
A near miss (the game also calls it a graze) is counted when the core stays very close to a wall, or very close to a
hazard, for a short beat without touching it. Two details matter:
- Brief contact with the danger zone does not count. You have to hold the line for roughly
a tenth of a second, so a lucky flick past an edge scores nothing. Think "ride the edge", not "tap the edge".
- There is a pause between near misses of just under half a second, so you cannot farm one wall
by wobbling. Spread them out along the road.
Every near miss also nudges your score multiplier up a little.
Lighting a Lumen Rush
- Land one near miss. That starts a chain.
- Land the next within 20 metres of the previous one. Wait longer than that and the chain starts over from zero.
- The fourth near miss in a chain lights LUMEN RUSH.
- While the Rush burns, the points you earn are doubled, and each Rush you light also pushes the multiplier higher
for the rest of the run.
The multiplier climbs with time survived, near misses and Rushes, and it stops growing at a fixed cap, so it rewards
staying alive more than any single trick.
Tips for chaining grazes
- Pick one side early. On a wide, gentle stretch, slide to the wall side and hold your line.
Corrections cost you the beat you need.
- Graze hazards, not just walls. A gate edge or a moving slot you thread tightly counts the same as
a wall. Hazards are where most chains are built.
- Learn the rhythm before you go close. Sliding gates, pulse walls and shutters all move on a
fixed pattern tied to distance, not to a clock. The same gate behaves the same way every time you meet it.
- Do not chase a chain into a squeeze. If the fourth graze means a risky cut, let the chain lapse.
A new one starts from the next clean line.
- Flow rewards it. If Flow goes a long stretch without a Rush, its next chain is a Gauntlet, a dense stretch that is a natural place to light one.
The six worlds
Journey is 120 levels, 20 per world. Each world has one signature hazard and the later worlds run faster.
- World 1Lumen LabThe place to learn. Broad S-curves and
wall pairs with a slot that slides across the road. Read the slot's swing before you commit.
- World 2Candy ReactorPulse walls: one side of the road breathes inward
on a beat. Count it, then go through on the open half of the cycle.
- World 3Crystal VeinCrystal teeth stick out into the road. Tighter lines and
chicanes, where reading the silhouette early is the whole skill.
- World 4Abyss ReefNodes orbit the middle of the corridor. Wait for the
orbit to open a lane rather than trying to outrun it.
- World 5Solar CircuitShutter gates: a slot that snaps between two positions and
holds. Fast, sustained bends; commit once the slot has landed.
- World 6Void BloomPetals open inward from alternating sides, and the
world also mixes in gates, shutters, orbiters, teeth and pulse walls from the others. This is the mastery world.
Across all six worlds you will also meet islands standing in the middle of the road (pick a side), creatures lying
across it with a body that winds from side to side, and holes in the floor. The core falls into a hole when its
centre crosses the edge, not when its rim touches it, so you have a little more room than it looks.
Modes and rewards
Journey
120 levels. Each level has three medals: finish it, collect enough gold sparks, and finish without reviving.
Flow
An endless run that goes on until you hit something. It opens with a fixed order of teaching chains and then picks patterns by weight.
Daily
A Flow track generated from the date, so everyone playing that day gets the same road.
Revives and ads
When you crash, the big button on the card plays a short rewarded video and the ball carries on from where it hit. If
no video can load, that revive is given anyway, once per run. The small retry button is always there instead.
No ad appears during a run.
The game
Hollowline is a free Android game with no account and no cloud save, made by one small team. If this guide made you
curious, it is on
Google Play.
Questions or bugs: support.