Kye

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Kye is a charity-ware game originally for 32-bit Microsoft Windows systems. The gameplay involves Kye, a green circle that is supposed to be a dog, moving around mazes to collect all the diamonds in the level. The various objects make the gameplay Nintendo Hard: There are blocks, rocks and monsters all over the place and a common way to lose was to get trapped, die or get the path to the diamonds blocked.

The game is most notable for its level editor due to the way objects can interact with one another. Gained a small community during the early years of the World Wide Web, in which people shared their levels. The original version is available for download here. This SourceForge page contains a list of many ports and versions that were made.

Tropes used in Kye include:
  • All There in the Manual: You would have no idea whatsoever that the main character is a dog unless you read the help files.
  • Block Puzzle: Featuring sliding blocks and blocks that create other blocks.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Some of the new beasts in Xye really know about the objects that were usually very useful against beasts in Kye.
  • Fan Remake: Python Kye.
  • Fan Sequel: Various so-called ports actually introduce new features and objects. Including Kye 3.0, Xye, S Kye and others.
  • Level Editor: One of its main selling points.
  • Minus World: The levels were stored as text files. So, many a player tried to provide normal text files such as the readme files to the game and see what happens. It created levels that were usually unsolvable and full of monsters and nonsensical wall structures.
  • The Maze: The door objects allowed fans to make very confusing maze layouts.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: All that a monster needs to kill Kye is to get to a cell that shares an edge with Kye's current cell.
  • Vaporware: Kye Deluxe, sadly.