Styx

Year 1983, the PC is still figuring out what it can do. Graphics cards are a luxury, sound comes from a beeper on the motherboard, and Windmill Software releases Styx — a game that looks like a line drawing but keeps you glued to the monitor longer than many titles with bigger budgets.

Styx is a variation on the then-popular "enclosure" genre, a cousin to the arcade classic Qix. You control a character moving along the perimeter of the playing field, and your task is to divide the space with lines so you gradually fill the required percentage of the screen. Enemies — floating irregular shapes — naturally get in your way. They hit your incomplete line and it's game over.

The controls are four directions and guts. It couldn't be simpler, yet the tension rises with every step away from the safe perimeter. As long as the line isn't closed, you're vulnerable. The bigger the chunk of space you try to cut off in one move, the bigger the gamble. The game doesn't explain this anywhere — you'll figure it out after your first, second, third death. That's how game design tutorials worked back then.

What sets Styx apart from direct Qix clones is the pace and the feel of movement. Enemies behave unpredictably enough that each run is slightly different. The game also doesn't waste time — the next round starts instantly, no animations, no loading, no persuasion. This very immediacy is why hours slipped by unnoticed. We'd call it a "one more turn loop" today; back then we just stared at our watches in confusion.

Styx has aged, of course. The graphics are colored rectangles and nothing more, the sound is a series of beeps, and visual feedback requires a certain tolerance. Anyone expecting anything beyond pure game mechanics will walk away after two minutes. But if you sit down knowing what this is and when it's from, you'll find a surprisingly solid mechanic that holds up even after forty years. You can't say that about plenty of later games.

Today Styx appeals to those who love arcade purity — no story, no unlockables, just score and the drive to beat it. Fire it up in your browser via DOSBox emulators in a minute flat, and it's the perfect pick for twenty minutes while you're waiting for something. Windmill Software made plenty of these little gems in the eighties that held up far better than you'd expect. Styx is a great example why.