About
Kye is a real-time puzzle game with a variety of interacting objects, drawing ideas from Sokoban and Boulder Dash while adding a real-time component and Pac-Man-like arcade levels; anyone can create new levels for it. Kye for C64 is a from-scratch 6502 assembly port of Colin Garbutt's 1992 puzzle game Kye for the Commodore 64, built by the author as a technical exercise in handling hundreds of active objects while combining hi-res graphics with a dynamic sprite overlay. It's controlled exclusively via joystick (port 2), with no keyboard input, and can load hundreds of user-made level packs originally created for the PC version.
How it differs from the original
The port deliberately doesn't replicate an original-game bug in which a monster killing Kye near a one-way door teleports the door to his respawn point — in this version the door stays put. It also skips the original's spiral-search logic for finding a free respawn tile when Kye's start position is occupied, simply placing Kye back at the start instead, and it caps active objects at 255 at once, which can cause it to skip levels that exceed that limit.
Getting started
It's a free download (for real C64 hardware or an emulator), played with a joystick in port 2 only. Level packs can be swapped by editing which packs are included before rebuilding from source, with room for over 100 user-made levels at once.
Known limitations
- gameplay: Limited to 255 active objects at the same time; levels exceeding this threshold are skipped.
- feature: No in-game level editor; loading and saving custom levels on disk not implemented.
Media
Additional notes
- External link
- The original 1992 Kye can still be played today via an archive.org browser emulator.