Line Rider is a browser game/software toy originally created in September 2006 by Boštjan Čadež, a Slovenian student. Soon after its initial appearance on DeviantArt, Line Rider became an internet phenomenon.

Čadež was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Slovenia and was assigned to do an art project by the school's illustration class in 2005. He planned the project to be coded animation software, as he had previous programming experience. Čadež noticed a program by Anderas Gysin named Cronodraw that partially matched this frame-by-frame animation concept and later placed the drawing and mouse control mechanics of Gysin's program into the final product of Line Rider. Čadež then found a page in his sketchbook that consisted only of a small man sledding on a tilted line; this brought back memories of when he was a child doodling the man sledding on various "path lines", and he decided this would be the basis of the project.

Line Rider was completed in non-consecutive periods for more than a year, the amount of work totalling four months; the development process involved Čadež learning physics and vector mathematics through tutorials. The basic concept is to draw one or more lines with the mouse on which a boy (referred to as "Bosh" by the creator) can ride a sled on the drawn lines after the player presses the "Play" button. The game includes simulated physics, which means the track must be sufficiently smooth to prevent the character from falling off the sled.

This game inspired the creation of other games, most notably Free Rider. We owe the Free Rider series' existence to Boštjan Čadež.

Line Rider created by Boštjan Čadež 

In 2006, Pete Shadbolt of Parroe Games began working on a bike game being developed by OneMoreLevel, a flash-game website created by Ira Willey (Ira). By the 10th of February 2007, OneMoreLevel forums opened, where Ira posted a sneak peek of the game with a link to the Free Rider Trailer. On the 17th, Ira announces Free Rider will be released the upcoming Monday, and Pete posts a link to a gameplay video and shares the code for the first-ever Free Rider track. On the 19th of February, Free Rider is officially released on OneMoreLevel.com, thus beginning the Free Rider series.

People can create tracks for a character (affectionately named Pete) who rides a bike by using lines to draw a path, similar to Line Rider. Tracks can be saved into a map code and sent to other people so they can play it. A lot of people wanted a way to play other people's tracks online without having to copy the map code. So on the 24th of June 2007, Maxime Simon released the first Free Rider Tracks Database, where the track code is automatically loaded into the game. The Database has specific searches depending on the track name, author, track ID or difficulty.

The 25th of September 2007 saw Radio F Software Headquarters (RFSHQ), co-created by Dan Gusak (goose), create a Free Rider page, and by the 16th of October, the website had a working Database, now TrackMill.com. On the 3rd of December 2007, Free Rider became the most-played game on OneMoreLevel.com, with nearly 6.5 million plays. 

On the 21st of October 2007, Pete posted a topic on OneMoreLevel Forums called "Free Rider 2 Game Footage" with a link to a gameplay video for Free Rider 2. On the 7th of December, Free Rider 2 is released on OneMoreLevel.com with improved graphics and an editor. By the end of the year, Maxime created the Free Rider 2 Database (commonly referred to as FR2DB).

OneMoreLevel and FR2DB went through many issues from the 6th of March 2008, with the OML forums going down twice and FR2DB becoming too big for free hosting on the 12th of March. The 17th of May saw months of maintenance work pay off as FR2DB has a new hoster and track previewer. On the new FR2DB forum on the 24th of May 2008, Maxime posted the topic “The FR2 DB is back online!”, marking the return of the DB and the beginning of the forum. The 30th of November in the same year saw RFSHQ be renamed to TrackMill and the forums open to all members now.

The FR2 era saw a massive influx of new forum communities, which began the introduction of track contests. The first recognised Free Rider contest was the Track #1 Contest, where on the 18th of August 2008, moose_man's track FR2DB was made the first of the FR2DB. Other notable contests include the Art Contest, Valentine Contest, $100 Contest, Track in a Circle Contest and Story Mode Contest (the tracks of these contests are on Canvas Rider here, scroll to the bottom of each page to see the next Contest Winners).

Most FRHD veterans begin their FR journey with FR2 on websites like TrackMill.com and OneMoreLevel.com. This era of Free Rider saw unparalleled popularity compared to other games in the series that followed, accumulating 500 million plays worldwide and over 1.5 million player-created tracks in just a couple of years over an endless number of websites hosting FR2. It produced extremely talented trackmakers with revolutionary ride concepts and detail that not only carried onto future Free Rider games but also some who still play FRHD and create tracks to this day.

On September 13th 2010, Maxime released an incredibly improved version of FR2 called Canvas Rider, completely written in HTML5 instead of Flash like all previous Free Rider games. Featuring lag-free gameplay from the camera being changed, asynchronous multiplayer, 25 fps with stars acting as checkpoints and an improved editor. Considering the worldwide success of FR2, CR revolutionised what people already loved about the game.  

By the 9th of December, CR on the Chrome Web Store reaches 900,000 users. Soon enough, CR became the top game in the Free Rider series, with players reuploading their tracks and new players discovering the greatness of drawing tracks and racing bikes on this new and improved website. Due to incredibly high amounts of traffic on the website, CR has to get new servers on the 30th of June 2011, a minor setback, but a move necessary to keep CR up and running on people's browsers. The game reached over 2 million tracks in just 2 years, a feat not achieved by a singular Free Rider website before or since. 

CR hosted more amazing contests, including the Banner Contest and VIP Track #1 Contest, both starting on the 2nd of December. On the 31st of December, Rhino's banner track was featured on the homepage and on the 5th of January 2011, Kazniti's track became Track #1 on CR and FR2DB. On the 13th of December 2011, a Poster Contest was announced. Results were announced on the 7th of February 2012, with the top tracks being printed on a poster and sent to the winners, who were Ness, Plastic, Leboulanger, and Cake. 

Just as CR was peaking on the internet, on the 6th of January 2013, Maxime made an announcement on the FR2/CR Forums that almost no one saw coming, breaking the hearts and angering the thousands of dedicated Free Rider players. OneMoreLevel (Ira Willey) and Kano Games contacted Maxime and other developers, how all unapproved Free Rider clones would be shut down before the release of the next official game in the series. Just like that, the CR track editor was now discontinued. The site will no longer be updated and won't be able to submit any further tracks, with Free Rider 3 being the official release and sequel. Canvas Rider would continue to stay up, and the tracks that have been submitted over the years would remain there.  

If you've played Free Rider since FR2, you will know how bad FR3 was. It is without question the worst release for the series. Created by OneMoreLevel and Kano Games, it was officially released on the 6th of January 2013, the same day that the CR editor was taken down and the website had restricted access. When the game came out, the whole Community was outraged by how terrible the FR3 was. Despite the game now having a friends list where you can share and challenge friends with your ghosts, it almost felt like a terrible copy of FR2.

Community members began blaming Maxime for the whole situation for not disclosing anything earlier, whilst others pointed fingers at Kano Games and OneMoreLevel, wanting to make money despite it being the first official game release in the series in almost 5 years. In reality, Maxime (CR creator) and goose (TrackMill creator) never had rights to the game. They started making money from ad revenue, and at some point, something was going to happen due to legal reasons. But instead of redefining the game officially again, FR3 was almost a step back, exhibiting cool new features but ruining everything CR and TrackMill stood for.

The game claims to have better Flash performance than the other versions, but many people complained that the game was laggy. Tracks from Free Rider 2 and Canvas Rider were added to FR3, but the gallery of tracks was thousands instead of millions compared to the success of FR2 and CR. Regardless, most players didn't want to move to FR3 and were disgusted that some of their tracks were moved there despite being given the option to add their tracks there initially.

The FR3 Development Team promised new features and updates, like making an HTML5 version of the game, but it never came. The Free Rider Community started to lose steam, and with the CR track editor discontinued, players didn't know where to go next with the game. 

Almost immediately after Canvas Rider's closure, there were talks about releasing another Free Rider clone to replace it. Community member haxzerz broke through and released the unique and exclusive Black Hat Rider. This game was something else; the ghosters would tell you why. The old checkpoint system from CR returned, but this time, stars/goals acted as checkpoints. This feature was revolutionary for ghosting, allowing players to perfect ghosts like never before by resetting at each star till a player was satisfied, producing the craziest ghosts ever seen at the time.

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During Free Rider HD's early days, people sometimes posted their tracks on BHR first before republishing on FRHD when players could publish tracks. To the very end of BHR, some people religiously ghosted on the site as it was much easier than FRHD. After the game was shut down on the 13th of July 2020, Calculus

Developed by Kano Apps and OneMoreLevel in 2013 and officially released on the 4th of December 2013, it is the last official edition of the Free Rider series, but the first with 30 fps when ghosting and unparalleled graphics compared to the other editions. Once again, old FR2 and CR tracks were moved over to FRHD as Community Classic Tracks before the official game release on the 19th of November 2013. 10105 tracks were uploaded, going from track ID 1001 to 11106. Upon the initial release of the game and forums, Community members from CR and BHR didn't know what to expect, especially since FRHD had no editor. Some people continued to rant about the downfall of CR, or complained about what Kano did to ruin the game. Others remained optimistic, whilst most veterans of the game decided to stick with BHR or draw on CR editor clones for the time being.

The first Free Rider HD Trailer was released on the 9th of January 2014, grabbing the attention of people who were unaware of the Free Rider series. Shortly after this exposure, the track editor was released on the 5th of February as a Beta Version. People were still not able to upload tracks, and veterans still insisted on using the BHR editor instead. After a long wait, the 8th of May 2014 marked the beginning of the FRHD era when players were finally able to upload tracks. The Great Volcano by Char (a Community Developer) was the first track released, and new tracks began from track ID 50001 onwards. Veterans finally decided to stick with FRHD as they realised it was the go-to website to publicise their tracks. Only a few dedicated ghosters played BHR religiously till its closure on the 13th of July 2020.

The Community was expecting big things from FRHD, and that is exactly what they got. Free Rider HD is the next generation of Free Rider, available to play on any device, including a Mobile Version of the game that can be linked to a person's normal FRHD account. FRHD outdoes the previous versions in almost every way possible. With Campaigns, thousands of top Free Rider tracks online, multiplayer racing, achievements, a powerful track editor, leaderboards and more, FRHD can keep you entertained for a very long time! The game had two original releases as well, Free Rider HD Mobile and Free Rider Jumps, both released in 2018. The last official update for FRHD was the release of the 11th Campaign Super Free Rider Bros, containing one track, Stig's renowned Super Mario Bros. FRHD track.

Although the Community has been through tough times, it is by far the most dedicated in the series, with many still playing since the FR2 days and a plethora of new players creating amazing tracks, producing mind-blowing ghosts, hosting contests, releasing tools for the Community, and offering a wide range of thread topics to keep the Community engaged and connected as one for the years to come. FRHD is currently run by the community after Kano Apps started to focus on other games, and when Char announced he was leaving Kano on the 30th of March 2021.

A group of dedicated Staff Members, Administrators and Forum Moderators such as Totoca12, Eryp, Max007x and Calculus keep this game running smoothly and driving it into a better future. FRHD Developers like Eric (also the Kano President and Co-founder) check in every once in a while to ensure the game and community don't hit any roadblocks. FRHD has been through 9 eras and is currently in "The Next Generation" Era after the release of the greatest Free Rider editor of all-time, track editor 1.1 by Ness and Pie42, bringing new light as a new generation of Free Rider players begins to come through.