Bonyx 2 was developed by imp89 in 1995. imp89 was René Bauer’s digital artist’s name since he began game development in 1989. The game mechanics of the BonYx are simple: you arrange flat stones in rows and can make them disappear when three identical stones are in the bottom row. Imp89 can no longer remember where the game mechanics came from. However, inspiration may have come from the Japanese arcade puzzle game Klax (1990) by Namco, which was rotated 90 degrees and had a slightly modified horizontal arrangement, instead of a vertical one.

The stones lie in a disorderly pile. Individual stones can be thrown from the pile, and they collect in the bottom row. If all the stones in the bottom row are of the same type, they all disappear; otherwise, they are pushed upwards. The level is solved when all the stones are gone. A time limit in the form of a bar that slowly moves from top to bottom keeps you on your toes. The graphics were created with a demo version of Photoshop (you couldn't save anything). You had to take screenshots, which you then loaded back into Photoshop.

The code was written in C in CodeWarrior (1993). CodeWarrior was an integrated development environment that could create both 68k programs and PowerPC binaries. These could then be combined and used as fat binaries (see Bauer 2025e). From 1994 to 1996, Code Warrior was widely used by game developers. Imp89 extensively documented the code and structure of Bonyx 2 in a research blog entry (cf. Bauer 2025f). Funnily enough, the setting of the stone piles is referred to as a construction site in the code.

The game was developed for Mac OS and distributed as shareware. This was done via an early website and via magazines. imp89 received shareware contributions in letters and with cards from all over the world.

See:
Bauer, René (2025e). Indie-)Spielentwicklung auf dem Mac/Finder 7.1+ (1995) [Erfahrungsbericht]. In: GameLab Blog, October 22, 2025, https://research.swissdigitization.ch/?p=6270, (30.01.2026).

Bauer, René (2025f). BONYXII 1995; Imp89 Macintosh 7.1+ Tech-Aspekte [Erfahrungsbericht]. In: GameLab Blog, October 27, 2025, https://research.swissdigitization.ch/?p=6382, (30.01.2026).