Kye (video Game) - The Game

The Game

The player controls the Kye, a green sphere, using either the mouse or the keyboard. The only action in the game is movement – Kye interacts with the game by pushing objects, pulling them, or consuming/collecting them (by stepping onto them). Each level is a single screen, of 30×20 squares, each of which can contain a single object. The object of the game is to collect all of the diamonds in each level, after which the player proceeds to the next level. There is a password system enabling a player to return later to a level he/she has reached previously.

The main objects are the Kye, diamonds, solid walls, soft blocks (which are consumed by walking through them), and solid, movable blocks (which can be pushed around). There are also stickers, which act as magnets and come in horizontal and vertical varieties. A sticker attracts and immobilizes any movable object (other than Kye or another sticker of the same variety) that comes within two squares of it along its axis. Kye can also use them to pull objects. Combinations of these objects alone gives an entirely non-real-time puzzle, enabling puzzles like Sokoban to be constructed (although Kye lacks a fillable-hole object, it is possible to combine the sticky blocks with some traps to enable a Sokoban-like gameplay).

There are also real time moving objects - sliders and rockies. these have some similarity with falling-rocks puzzle games, but since in Kye they can go in four directions, and there are also turning blocks (clockers and anticlockers) that can redirect a stream of sliders or rockies, it is possible to construct circular flows and periodic mechanisms. The bouncers, which are the only non-player-controlled objects that can push other objects, allow mechanisms to be constructed.

There are also beasts: spikes, blobs, twisters, gnashers, and viruses. These home in on Kye, who loses a life (of four allotted for each level, as 0 lives count as an life) on contact with one. This gives the game its arcade element; however, the game's documentation states that the beasts are intended to be outwitted rather than outrun – for example, by pushing blocks to trap them or attracting them to stickers or black holes.

Version 2 added timer blocks (making it easy to add time-delay mechanisms to levels), black holes (which destroy objects that flow, wander or are pushed into them), and shooters (which create new sliders or rounders). These take Kye further from the puzzle game area where it started, and more into the arcade game genre.