Apparently this page is already getting some views, which is awkward, so here's a link to the game this page details
"magnets" is used here as a lump term for regular magnets, anti-magnets, and sticky blocks.
"portal" and "teleporter" refer to two distinct objects, one of which is fixed to the floor and one of which is pushable.
| Name | Image | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Xye | todo |
Xye is the namesake and player character, and can be moved with the arrow keys. In the game Xye is based off of, "Kye", the player character could move diagonally by holding two arrow keys at once. This is not the case in Xye. If you attempt to play a level without a Xye spawn location, Xye will spawn in the bottom-left tile of the map and replace whatever tile was on there (unless it is a floor tile such as a fire pad or secret wall that Xye can normally coexist on). If the tile at the bottom-left is a gem, the gem count will not properly decrease when the gem is erased, and the level will be unbeatable unless the gem erased was a star gem. If there is no set spawn location for Xye, and the tile at the bottom-left is a portal or a pit, the game will crash if this is the first level you've played after starting the application. Otherwise, the pit will harmlessly disappear with an image of Xye in it, and the portal has a chance of either immediately teleporting Xye or placing a copy of Xye on the destination. This copy of Xye has some interesting properties detailed in the "advanced" section below. If multiple Xyes are placed in the level via text editor, all Xyes except the top-right will vanish once the level starts. Xye can have extra lives (up to 3 in the graphical editor, but any amount if the level is modified with a text editor). This means that in any situation where Xye is killed, it will simply disappear and respawn at the location it started at, with one less life. Xye cannot respawn on the same tile it died on. If Xye has an extra life but its spawn location is blocked, it will try to respawn at a location nearest to its spawnpoint. This can allow Xye to essentially teleport through a wall. If every tile in the level is occupied (or is non-floor, even if it's nonsolid) when Xye tries to respawn, the game will display a message box saying "No space left to spawn Xye" and all extra lives will instantly be depleted. Xye appears green, but is not actually green for the sake of color marked areas. Similarly, Xye is not actually round (see definition of "round" below). Who or what Kye (and Xye by extension) is is not clear. Descriptions of the game alternate between treating Kye as a character in "his" own right, and referring to Kye as "the player's piece" like a board game piece, sometimes calling it "the Kye". I choose here to refer to Xye as "it", and limit usage of "you" and "the player". |
| Wall | todo | Walls are immovable and block all objects, but can by destroyed by fireballs, landmines (moving them safely via reverse magnet), or explosions. |
| Metal wall | todo | Walls that are metal cannot be destroyed by any means. |
| Round wall | todo |
When the level is first generated, exposed corners of round walls will be round. This section will be used to explain the property of "round" things in general: If something is round, other round things that are forced to move into it will instead pass it diagonally whenever possible. If there is only one legal side it can pass to, it will pass that way. If there are two legal sides, it picks a side to pass to through some odd process I can't seem to figure out. (It's not pseudorandom, but it is based upon which movement tick the two round things collide.) If two round things are moving towards each other, the round thing on the top will pass diagonally and the round thing on the bottom will proceed forward as normal. |
| Gems | todo | Gems are indestructible, and Xye collects them by walking into them. Collecting them all (except star gems, which are optional) triggers the end of the level. To be a tad more precise: whenever non-star gems exist in a level, the amount of each type of gem remaining is displayed alongside the text "Remaining:" at the bottom of the screen. Counters vanish when they hit zero, and "Remaining:" vanishes when there are no counters. You win the level when and only when "Remaining:" vanishes, so a level with no gems is unwinnable (unless there exists a gem factory). Star gems are not required for completion. Once a star gem is collected, a counter tracking how many star gems you have appears next to the text "Got:". Aside from that, they do absolutely nothing, and are just there for the challenge. |
| Keys | todo | Keys are collectibles that allow Xye to open doors of their matching color. Keys stack, and one key is consumed whenever Xye tries to open a door of the respective color. Keys can be moved by magnets, bots, and pushers. They do not count as specifically "colored" by mechanics other than door-opening, nor do they open doors when pushed against them. That would be pretty cool if it were a thing, don't lie. The amount you have of each key is tracked in its own "Got:" counter at the bottom of the screen. |
| Name | Image | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Generic block | todo | Blocks with a flat color and no special symbol on them are pretty standard. They can be pushed around, can't push each other, and that's pretty much it. Their usefulness in levels is mainly limited to when color doors are involved. More interesting are "large blocks", which cannot have any symbol. Large blocks are like normal blocks, but... large! Pushing any part of a large block causes the entire large block structure to move in the same direction (except when moving in that direction is not a legal move). Large blocks pass over pits as though they're just normal floor, and will never fall into pits even if every part of the large block is over a pit. Large blocks can be split into smaller large blocks or normal blocks when parts of them are destroyed by anything that would destroy a normal block (fireballs, black holes, landmines, explosions). |
| White block | todo | White blocks are a variant of blocks, and insigificant in every way except that they only come in no-symbol and large form and that they ignore all color marked areas. If a symbol block's "nocolor" tag is set to 1 in a Xye level file, the block will appear black and white in the graphical editor, but instantly become a green block of the corresponding type once the level starts. |
| Metal block | todo | Metal blocks are another variant of blocks. Like white blocks, they never have symbols and don't count as any color. Unlike white blocks, they are immune to being destroyed, much like metal walls, and do not come in large form. |
| Wildcard block | todo | Wildcard blocks are small blocks with no symbol that count as any color for color marked areas (including purple areas, though they do not visually have purple on them). They also count as red for fire pads. |
| Round block | todo | Round blocks are blocks, but round. They can have symbols, but can never be large. All of the above blocks have a round form. See "round wall" for what being round means. |
| Arrow (symbol) | todo | Arrow blocks move forward on particular intervals. Red and purple blocks (same speed) move faster than yellow blocks, which move faster than green blocks, which move faster than blue blocks. |
| Scroll (symbol) | todo | Scroll blocks can only be pushed in the direction indicated by their arrow. This restriction does not apply to magnets. Round scroll blocks can still roll in any direction if they hit another round object. |
| Plus (symbol) | todo | When a plus block is pushed, all plus blocks and minus blocks of the same color switch polarity. They can be safely moved by magnets without causing a polarity switch. |
| Minus (symbol) | todo | Minus blocks cannot be moved at all, not even by magnets. They can only be moved if they are switched to plus blocks. |
| Dot (symbol) | todo | Dot blocks are slippery. When Xye pushes them, they move in the direction pushed them until they come to an impassible obstacle. (Round dot blocks do not stop when they roll sideways.) Their movement speed depends on their color, with the same speeds as arrow blocks. Dot block factories generate the dot blocks sliding. |
| Yellow surprise block | todo | Surprise blocks all behave entirely differently depending on what color they are. Yellow surprise blocks turn into yellow pushers when they are pushed, facing whichever direction they were pushed in. Magnets do not cause them to transform. |
| Red surprise block | todo | Red surprise blocks explode in a 3x3 area when an arrow or scroll block moves into them. (ONLY arrow and scroll blocks can cause them to explode, not pushers or dot blocks. If they are destroyed by other means, no 3x3 explosion will appear. Round red surprise blocks will not be detonated by round arrow or scroll blocks unless the arrow or scroll block cannot legally roll sideways past it.) |
| Blue surprise block | todo | Blue surprise blocks turn into blue-colored walls after being pushed (again, magnets don't count). These blue walls have no different properties than normal walls, and do not count as blue for marked areas, though the blue surprise blocks themselves do. Round blue surprise blocks make round blue walls. When blue walls are generated, adjacent round corners of round walls will be converted to normal corners. Round blue walls will also not have any round corners adjacent to a wall or another blue wall. |
| Green surprise block | todo | Green surprise blocks turn into blue surprise blocks of the same roundness when pushed, making them like blue surprise blocks that require two pushes to activate. And that's it! |
| Purple surprise block | todo | Purple surprise blocks vanish and teleport Xye to their current position when they are pushed. If a purple surprise block is pushed onto a portal, Xye will teleport twice in succession. |
| Turning blocks | todo | When arrow or scroll blocks make contact with turning blocks (and cannot roll sideways past them), they will turn either clockwise or counter-clockwise, depending on what symbol is displayed on the turning block. Interestingly, turning blocks may appear in white, whereas normal symbol blocks cannot (perhaps just to avoid the notion of a white surprise block). |
| Gem requirement blocks | todo | Come in yellow, red, green, blue, and purple. While there remain uncollected gems of the respective color (star gems are considered purple), these are essentially unmovable steel walls that can activate color marked areas. When those gems are collected, they become pushable. Interestingly, these can toggle from pushable to unpushable if all respective gems are collected but then another is spawned via factory. Gem requirement blocks can never be round, large, or symboled. |
| Fireball | todo | Fireballs are special red blocks that move at the speed of a red arrow block, and self-destruct on the first object they come into contact with. They can be caught from the side by a regular magnet or sticky block without exploding, but will still destroy anything that comes into contact with it (and promptly be destroyed). Fireballs can be "round" if they were spawned by a round object going on a fire pad, but this is purely visual. If you manage to have a round block make side contact with a round fireball, it will not pass diagonally, even when it would on a round red arrow block in the same position. Fireballs cannot be spawned through any means other than a red block being pushed onto a fire pad, and cannot be placed with the text editor, as far as I'm aware. |
| Yellow number block | todo | "Number", like "surprise", is not a conventional symbol, since differently colored versions act drastically different. Yellow number blocks are standard pushable blocks with numbers on them. They tick down about 1/28th as fast as Xye's movement speed. Once they tick down from 0, they instantly disappear. Things can slip from round number blocks on the same tick they disappear. |
| Red number block | todo | Red number blocks have very little in common with yellow number blocks. A red number block's number only goes down when it is (successfully) pushed. Once it ticks down from zero, it explodes, destroying tiles adjacent to it. Xye will die if it pushes a red number block at zero, so it's best to find a way to push it remotely. Magnets do not affect its countdown. |
| Blue number block | todo | Blue number blocks are just very slow yellow number blocks. It ticks once for every five times a yellow number block would tick. |
| Green number block | todo | Green number blocks tick at the same speed as yellow number blocks, but start out "unactivated". When Xye moves onto a tile adjacent to a green number block, it becomes active and instantly ticks down once (unless it starts at 0, for some reason, in which case it will just take half as long to disappear as a block starting at 1). Active green number blocks will tick down as normal, and will cause other green number blocks to become active whenever they're adjacent. |
| Purple number block | todo | Purple number blocks are green number blocks which explode once they tick down from 0, intead of just disappearing. Purple number blocks will not activate adjacent green blocks, nor vice versa. |
| Clock | todo | Clocks. They spin counter-clockwise, for some reason. Every 17 "ticks" (referring to the clock hand moving), they try to shoot an arrow block of their respective color in the direction they're currently facing. If the direction they're trying to shoot in is blocked, they wait until they are next facing an available space. Clocks do not keep track of when they should next try to shoot while holding in a blocked shot, so a blocked clock will be offset from the normal clock cycle once it's freed. Clocks are pushable... but "round" clocks, though they shoot round blocks, are not round themselves! This is a holdover from Kye. The default tileset tries to signify this by making round clocks look like regular clocks with slightly rounder corners. |
| Filler | todo | Fillers are clocks that never spin and shoot much more commonly. Unlike with clocks and snipers, color matters for the speed at which a filler works: red and purple fillers shoot every time a clock would tick; other colored fillers are slower than this according to their speed as arrow blocks. Fillers do not do anything in response to a shot being blocked. As such, they never deviate from the standard filler cycle for their respective color. Round fillers are "round" in the same way round clocks are "round". |
| Sniper | todo | Snipers always try to face Xye, and shoot at twice the speed of a red filler (regardless of their color) when Xye is in the same row or column as they. A sniper's "cycle" restarts whenever Xye leaves its row/column, or when it's freed while holding a blocked shot. They, too, are quite wrong about what "round" should mean. |
| Color requirement block | todo | Color requirement blocks are only movable while every such block in the level is adjacent to a block of the same color (that isn't another color requirement block). Magnets cannot move them while they're unpushable. |
| Name | Image | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Black hole | todo | Black holes destroy any object shoved into them (any, even other inactive black holes) and become inactive for a few seconds (specifically the amount of time it would take a pusher to move 5 tiles). While inactive, they cannot destroy further objects, but can be pushed by a pusher or a bot. Inactive black holes can be destroyed by fireballs and landmines, but active black holes simply absorb them instead. Exploding number blocks at 0 do not explode if pushed into a black hole. |
| Factory | todo | Factories are kind of like clone machines from Chip's Challenge, except the button used to operate them is always on the factory itself, and the button is pressed by pushing against it. Only pushers, bots, and Xye itself can press factory buttons. If there's an object in front of where a factory tries to produce its object, nothing happens, even if the object would normally destroy, be moved, or be destroyed by the object in the factory (e.g. any factory in front of a black hole or landmine, a rattler factory in front of snake food, or a pusher factory in front of a block with nothing behind it) Despite appearing to be made of steel, factories are as destructible as any normal object. |
| Sticky block | todo | A sticky block is essentially a magnet with reduced range, which is much more intuitive and less obnoxious than actual magnets. (And there's no tick shenanigans involved.) It only sticks if Xye is directly adjacent to one of its sticky ends, so walking two tiles in front of it won't make it jump forward at Xye. This also means it only makes objects/enemies stick to it if they're right in front of it. |
| Name | Image | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Soft block | todo | Soft blocks are like the Xye equivalent of dirt in Chip's Challenge, Boulder Dash and Repton. The only things that can erase soft blocks are Xye itself and bots. They can also be destroyed however you'd destroy normal destructible tiles, such as with fireballs and landmines. Soft blocks can be recoloured. |
| Portal | todo | Portals teleport Xye to another portal of the matching color if one exists, or a destination specified by the levelmaker if one does not. Portals without a specified destination or a matching portal default to (0, 0) (the bottom-left corner). If there exist more than two portals of the same color, all but the first and last will be removed when the level is loaded. Destination portals will redirect Xye to a tile near it if the portal is occupied by another object, and will seek for other places to drop Xye if the space it attempts to redirect it is also occupied, similar to how respawning Xye works. The "no space left" corner-case was never implemented for portals, so the game will crash if a portal has no place to teleport Xye when Xye enters it. |
| Teleporter | todo | Todo. Difficult to summarize concisely
If a teleporter is on a force arrow has a link to an unblocked teleporter, Xye can ignore the force arrow and teleport through it. |
| Fire pad | todo | Anything red that crosses over a fire pad will become a fireball and move very fast in the direction it was going when it entered the fire pad. Square red things will turn into square fireballs, round red things will turn into round fireballs. See "fireball" in the blocks section for more info. |
| Force arrow | todo | Force arrows are bits of floor that can only be entered according to the direction of the arrows displayed on them. Moves made toward force arrows in the wrong way are not blocked, only the actual act of relocating to its tile is. E.g. blocks on force arrows can be pushed from any direction, but pushing it from the wrong end means the pusher won't enter the force arrows tile afterward. Force arrows (and their variants; see below) cannot be destroyed by explosions. |
| One-way door | todo | One-way doors are identical to force arrows except that most enemies and objects are not allowed on them, and most tilesets make left- and right-facing doors look the same, as well as up- and down-facing doors. |
| Hidden path | todo | Hidden paths are just one-way doors that can be configured to allow entrance from multiple directions (or no directions). All hidden paths look identical outside of the editor, so the only way to tell where one is open is to try walking into it. |
| Name | Image | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Gnasher, blob, virus, spike, twister | todo | These enemies are all near-identical (although blobs can be made "smart" if there is a blob mind in the level, see blob mind entry below). They try to get directly to Xye's current position, occasionally veering a tile or two from the obvious path, but can't pass obstacles that are more than two tiles wide. Notice that I said near-identical. There are actually very subtle differences in the AI of each of these enemies, mainly related to when they "veer", in what direction, and what they do when the path to Xye is blocked, though I can't precisely tell what logic they follow. It's rumored that every copy of Xye enemy AI is personalized. OK, there's no such rumor, but I couldn't resist that joke. |
| Blob mind | todo | A blob mind is a blob whose presence in a level causes all blobs to follow intelligent pathfinding akin to special enemies like tigers. Maybe this is only here to ensure compatibility with some weird Kye clone that made blobs smart for some reason? Blobs will stop being intelligent if all blob minds in the level die, and blob mind factories do not make blobs smart until they spawn a blob mind. Having more than one blob mind does not give the blobs additional intelligence. This is a wise move made to avoid the singularity. |
| Patience | todo | Patience is an enemy with intelligent pathfinding who only moves when Xye moves. |
| Bot | todo | Bots are like Patience, but do not have intelligent pathfinding, and push Xye (and can be pushed by Xye) rather than killing it, very much like the hugbots from Tom 7's game "Escape". They also have properties that normally only belong to Xye - for example, magnets react to them rather than them reacting to magnets, they can cross one-way doors (when going the correct way) and hidden paths, and they can push blocks and press buttons on factories. Oddly enough, though they don't pick up keys or gems, they can push keys as though they were ordinary blocks. They can't use portals. They can also push inactive black holes (which Xye cannot do). The only other entity in the game capable of doing this is a pusher. They only push objects of their own will; i.e. you can't push a bot into a block to make the bot push the block. |
| Tiger | todo | Tigers are like Patience, but they still move when Xye isn't moving, though at a slower pace (the speed of normal enemies) than when Xye is moving. Also, they don't look anything like tigers. Do not be deceived. |
| Spinners | todo | Spinners turn clockwise or counter-clockwise (depending on what type) whenever they hit an obstacle. Unlike most enemies like this in other games, CW spinners cannot be made to turn CCW (nor vice versa) with an appropriately shaped corner. Instead, they turn to hit the other wall of the corner, then turn again as a result of that, ultimately moving backwards. |
| Name | Image | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Xye copy | todo |
A copy of Xye can be created if Xye resets while its spawn point is on a portal, due to changing Xye's spawn point via text editing or the "no spawn point" behavior. If anything ever attempts to move it, it will disappear and cause the real Xye to move in the direction it would have moved. Monsters will also prefer chasing it over the real Xye if they start the level closer to the copy. The copy cannot be killed by enemies, but it can be destroyed in the same way ordinary objects can be destroyed, and it will respawn near the bottom-left if this happens. For some odd reason, snipers and bots will always prefer the real Xye to the copy. If the Xye copy is destroyed and respawned, there's a chance that trying to reset the level will move a random monster on top of the copy's portal (and the copy will not spawn). |
Xye's life count rolls over at 256. (In a level where Xye's life count is a multiple of 256, Xye starts out dead.)
If 256-life Xye starts on top of a portal, a (non-controllable) copy of Xye will be created on its destination on the first attempt only after loading the level.
If Xye's life count is a decimal, it will be rounded down.
If Xye's life count is below 1, the game will treat it as being 1, but will not attempt to overwrite it if you open the level in Xye's graphical editor.
If Xye's life count isn't a number, the game will treat it as 4, but attempting to open the level in the graphical editor will set it to 1.
Factories cannot have arbitrary objects put in them. Their contents are chosen by a "kind" variable, which is a number, and trying to set that number to something unusual will just cause the level parser to put some normal object in stead.
A factory of a negative kind will always be a Gnasher factory.
Factories have a "dir" variable, the direction in which objects are spawned, and a "swdir" variable, the side the switch button is on. The graphical editor will always set swdir to the polar oppsite of dir. If swdir is the same as dir, the switch will just be spawned on some other side instead (not sure what the logic for that is).
If two tiles of the same layer are assigned to the same position, only the one appearing later in the level file will be there.
Entering a number not corresponding to an orthogonal direction on the keypad into a hidden path's "ent" attribute causes the hidden path to be enterable from the top, and will cause the graphical editor to refuse to open the level containing it. ("Found tags and/or attributes that are not recognized by the current version.") Perhaps Xye could originally move diagonally (like in the original Kye), and hidden path could originally be enterable diagonally?
You can set the palette of individual tiles (and areas of tiles) - the default does not have to apply universally.
Internally, doors are on the "ground" layer. This means you can have objects that start on top of closed doors. (Though this will invoke the error "There were issues when loading some of the objects, possibly related to features that the editor does not yet support." when levels containing this are opened in the graphical editor.)
It doesn't really mean anything special since doors can close even while objects are on them, but hey.
(0,0) refers to the bottom-left corner.
You can't make large blocks round. Not happening. Large blocks are considered completely different objects than normal blocks - in the level file, anyway.