About Kye
Kye is an addictive puzzle game, originally for Windows. The game takes place in a small playing area, where the player cotrols Kye — a distinctive green blob. The player moves around and tries to collect all of the diamonds. However, there are many other objects in the game, which can obstruct, trap or kill the Kye.
Kye is one of those games like Chess, where a small number of different playing pieces, obeying simple rules, combine to create a game of enormous variety and complexity.
The Playing Pieces page on My Kye Page gives a description of the various objects in Kye. The game loads with a simple start level, and a series of introductory levels; it is best to play around in the introductory levels for the while and get a feel for the game, before attempting any of the add-on levels.
Kye is shareware, and, released in the early 90s, it was originally distributed only in collections of shareware games. Sadly this means that there is little information about it on the Internet, although the pages at this page provides a lot of information, as well as providing a download of the shareware version.
Versions of Kye
I got the original v1 via a collection of Windows shareware games. v1 has all the main elements of the game, and a (very) limited collection of levels.
Version 2 I got when I registered the game, so I got it from the author, but apparently it was also distributed as shareware (registering just got a few more levels and removed the registration/charity appeal at the start). Kye v2 also supports a range of new objects, including timer blocks, rocky/slider generators, black holes and one-way doors. It also includes a built-in level editor.
First-timers will want to start with the v1 levels, which are generally cleaner and less hectic (the default levels start with levels only using the v1 features). While I have made a lot of levels using the v2 features, it has to be said that many levels over-use the new features and become a bit too frantic and messy and make it less of a clean puzzle game. YMMV.
My Stuff
I have written a clone of Kye, for Linux (well, written in python for pygtk, so it should run on any platform that pygtk works on). This is on its own page.
I have also made a large number of extra levels for Kye. 20 of my levels were included in the registered Kye v2, but I have written another 30 since then. The various level sets are described here.
