''Styx'' is a video game released by Windmill Software in 1983 as a copy-protected, bootable 5.25" floppy disk for the IBM PC/XT. It is a clone of the

1981 Events January * January 1 ** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union. ** Palau becomes a self-governing territory. * January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensiv ...

arcade game ''

Qix is a 1981 puzzle video game developed by husband and wife team Randy and Sandy Pfeiffer and published in arcades by Taito America. ''Qix'' is one of a handful of games made by Taito's American division. At the start of each level, the playing f ...

''. In September 2004 the source code of the game became available "for historical interest" (with other Windmill Software games such as '' Digger''). Also, there is a reverse engineered variant from Andrew Jenner, called ''Styx Remastered''.download
on digger.org

Development

''Styx'' uses the same game engine as two other Windmill Software games, ''The Exterminator'' and ''Moonbugs'', and these were some of the few programs to make use of the 16-color quasi-graphics CGA mode (normally the CGA could only use 4 or 2 color graphics). However, it was possible to play on a monochrome monitor as long as the graphics card also supported color graphics (e.g. a Genoa Color Graphics Card). ''Styx'', ''The Exterminator'', and ''Moonbugs'' set CGA 320x200x4 mode on the title screen by directly manipulating the video registers; this causes them to display a screen full of garbage on later video cards. The in-game graphics also will only occupy half the screen due to technical differences between CGA and EGA/VGA, however the games can be patched to work correctly on VGA.

References

External links

* {{Windmill Software Games 1983 video games Video games developed in Canada Puzzle video games Action games Qix clones Windmill Software games Commercial video games with freely available source code Single-player video games