BonYx

bonYx is a 1995 Macintosh puzzle game by Impression89 (Imp89), a small German shareware author known for visually distinctive Classic-Mac puzzlers. It is a Tetris and Columns variant in which the player drags rows of stones across a board with a hand cursor, grouping matching colors so they collapse and clear.

Drag, Match, Clear

Where most falling-block games bind the player to gravity and rotation, bonYx swaps that model for a hand-cursor pull mechanic: rows are slid horizontally to align colored stones, which then dissolve when adjacent matches form. The result is a more deliberate, almost tactile puzzle rhythm than its falling-block cousins.

The Imp89 Look

bonYx sits within a small family of Imp89 titles, alongside RotYx, Grotic, BreakIn and Blown Eye, all of which share a hand-drawn, slightly off-kilter visual identity that set them apart from the typical shareware puzzlers of the mid-1990s Mac scene.

System Requirements

The game is a 68k binary that runs on System 7.0 through 7.6 and Mac OS 9, and emulates cleanly under SheepShaver and Basilisk II. Three versions survived: 2.0, 2.01, and 2.02, all distributed as StuffIt (.sit) archives.

Shareware Registration

bonYx required a registration key to unlock fully. A community-shared key (name: hbaess, code: 977068800) was posted in 2021 to allow continued preservation play after the original registration channel went dark.