Kye for Playdate

Kye is a classic action-puzzle game, created in 1992 by Colin Garbutt. Just 32 years later, Mouflon Cloud and gingerbeardman bring it to Playdate. This port is faithful to the original while having many quality of life improvements, such as crank to rewind or progress saving.

Note: We’re preparing the page for the 1.0 launch :) The new download will be up here soon!

How to play Kye?

Kye is a small smiley-face and its goal is to collect all diamonds in every level without getting stuck or eaten by monsters. Kye can push some objects and, under certain circumstances, pull them. Players must experiment to find the properties of the various objects.  

The game opens with a set of levels that teach you many of its mechanics. After that, there’s more than one thousand levels from the original game and community creators.

The history

• Kye was originally created in 1992 by Colin Garbutt for Windows 3.1. You can play the original on archive.org. Over the years, it was ported and remade many times.
• If want to know more about the game and its history, check the My Kye Page, a fan site going back to 2002!
• Kye is named after Colin Garbutts dog “for the way she rushes about all over the place”.
  

Features of the Playdate version

• In its Playdate incarnation, Kye has a priceless feature: Crank to rewind! Simply use the crank to retrace the last few steps when you find yourself in trouble. You can also skip back to any diamond pickup by using undo from game menu (press B any time).
• You don’t need to remember level codes — there’s a browser with all the sets and levels. There’s also a few recommended sets and you can add a ⭐️ star to your favorite sets.
• We are testing the sets on Playdate and they are marked with a checkmark. If you finish an untested set, you can post about it in the forum below.
• There’s a level editor right in the game. If you build something nice, let us now — we’ll be happy to include new levels in the game.

Charityware

Kye is distributed as charityware. To unlock all level sets in the game, donate to a children’s charity of your choice and then confirm your donation in the game. You can then post about the charity of your choice in the forum below.

Special Thanks

• Thanks Robert Phipps for keeping the website kye.me.uk alive and allowing us to distribute levels featured on the site with the game.
• Thanks Patai Gergely and scratchminer for help with the research of the inner working of the original game.
• Thanks Mark LaCroix and SoinkstersChris for playtesting.
• Thanks Tim Babcock for writing out Rules of Kye doc while working on a port for TI-89.
• Thanks everybody who worked on Kye ports, levels, or played the game!
• Thanks everybody who donated to a children's charity!
• Thanks Pajka & Františka for being the best!