The K Desktop Environment

Next Previous Table of Contents

2. The game

Basic rules

To win, you have to eat all the balls appearing in the field and leave through the exit. You mustn't hit yourself or a wall. For further reference about the objects appearing on the field, see the Objects section.

During the game, you are always growing (unless you find a "Cutter" field). The more balls you eat and the more time you play, the longer are you. As you get longer, it becomes more difficult to avoid hitting yourself, of course.

On the left, there is a timer bar which shows you the time (sic!) to eat the next ball. If you do not get the ball, there will appear n new balls on the playground. The value of n depends on the level (generally three).

After having eaten m balls (generally ten), the exit(s) open(s) and you can leave the level. Note that every one of these ten balls must have been the only one on the field when you have eaten it. This means, additional balls that have appeared after the timer bar has reached the top do not count! When the exit is open, the timer bar stops.

Objects

The most desirable objects on the field are the balls, of course. There are three types:

All these balls can have different colors. This does not mean anything special.

Then, there are the walls. There is not much to say about these.

These are the "One-Ways". You may enter them only in the shown direction.

This is a teleport and its exit. When you enter such a field, you are immediately teleported to the exit, which you leave in the same direction in which you entered the teleport. If you come across an exit, nothing happens. There may be various teleports in a level.

The "Cutter" makes you as short as you were at the beginning of the game. Very useful, really!

Finally, the exit. The left picture shows the exit when it is closed, in this case, it behaves like a wall. When the exit is open (right picture), go there as fast as you can!

Scoring

You basically get points for eating balls:
50 points for a Quiet Ball,
80 points for a Jumping Ball
and 100 points for a Moving Ball.
You get 200 additional points after winning a level.

Next Previous Table of Contents