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Khet

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Introduction

Khet is fun and easy to learn because all the pieces move in the same way. The object of the game is to destroy your opponent’s Pharaoh by bouncing your laser beam off the mirrored pieces and around the playing field. You can learn how to play in minutes!

Khet Second Life Edition is an officially licensed version of Khet by Innovention Toys, LLC. Copyright (C) 2005-06. All rights reserved.

The real life board game of Khet is no longer produced, and licensing for it has been sold to ThinkFun, Inc. ThinkFun now produces the game under the name “Laser Chess” and is available for purchase on their website at http://thinkfun.com/ as well as other online retailers.

 

Khet game logo. Copyright by Innovention Toys, LLC.


 

Khet 1.0 vs Khet 2.0

When choosing a starting board configuration you will be able to choose from “Khet 1.0” or “Khet 2.0” setups. Many of these setups may appear very similar, and indeed they are.

Khet is based on a real game, also called Khet (www.khet.com), formerly known as Deflexion. For our purposes, Deflexion is the same as Khet 1.0. This original version of Khet contained Obelisks guarding the Pharaohs and featured fixed lasers as part of the game board. These fixed lasers in Khet 1.0 always fired across your protected home row, and to turn them out onto the playing field you needed to use a mirrored piece, typically a Pyramid. The Obelisks in Khet 1.0 are basically ablative armor for the Pharaoh. They can take one hit, and then they’re gone. For this reason, they could be stacked to double up on their protection value. You have to hit a stack Obelisk twice to fully eliminate it, thus exposing the Pharaoh. This original Khet game was simply known as “Khet”, the “Khet 1.0” label came later in order to distinguish it from the revised version.

A revised version of Khet was released several years after the original debut of Khet. At this point, the original Khet became known as “Khet 1.0” and the new revised version became known as “Khet 2.0.” Players who have only experienced Khet in Second Life up to now have been playing “Khet 1.0.” In the revised Khet 2.0 the Obelisks have been replaced with an Anubis piece. This Anubis piece serves the same purpose as the Obelisks (bodyguard to Pharaoh), but are impervious to damage from the front. An Anubis can be hit any number of times by the laser and still survive as long as it is hit on the front. Hitting an Anubis on the rear or sides will eliminate it. In addition to replacing the Obelisks, the new Khet 2.0 features a new piece called the Sphinx. The Sphinx takes the place of the old fixed board lasers on the original Khet, putting the laser inside a piece instead. This piece can be rotated to fire the laser across your home row like Khet 1.0, or turned to fire the laser across the playing field. The Sphinx cannot be moved.

In summary, Khet 1.0 setups feature a fixed laser and Obelisks. Khet 2.0 setups feature a rotating laser (the Sphinx) and Anubis pieces. The board setups will otherwise be the same.

Also note that the version of Khet in Second Life (e.g. “Khet Board v3.0”) has no relation to the “Khet 1.0” or “Khet 2.0” moniker used above. “Khet 1.0” vs “Khet 2.0” is related to rules revisions, while the version number of the board in Second Life is related to software revisions.

 

Visual reference of Khet game pieces.


 

Game Play

Khet is for only two players. Players may withdraw and be replaced at any time by other players. To play Khet, simply click on the board. You will be presented with a menu.

  • To start the game, you must click Setup on the menu and choose a starting board layout. Then both players must choose Play to join the game.
  • Players take turns, each player moving only his/her own pieces. Silver always moves first. All the pieces can be either turned, or moved, or both, including the Pharaoh. The current turn is indicated by the color of the game board edge.
  • A turn consists of moving a piece one square in any direction (including diagonally) or of rotating a piece 90 degrees without changing squares. A piece cannot be moved and rotated on the same turn or rotated more than 90 degrees on one turn. To do this, simply touch the piece you wish to move or rotate. A control pad will appear over the top of the piece that you touched. Some pieces can only be rotated, some can only be moved, and some can be moved OR rotated.
  • No red piece can move into the squares marked with a silver Ankh, and no silver piece can move into the red Eye squares.
  • Except for the Scarab (formerly known as Djed) and Horus pieces (see the visual piece guide above), no piece can move into a square occupied by another piece.
  • When a player has moved, either by rotating or moving a playing piece, their laser is automatically fired, sending the beam around the field. The laser can not be ‘test fired’ to see where it will hit. All moves are final. The laser will always bounce off of mirrors at 90 degree angles.
  • When the laser is fired, it will stop either at the edge of the board or on the non-mirrored surface of one of the pieces. If it stops on a Pharaoh, the player whose Pharaoh is destroyed loses the game. If it stops on any other piece, that piece is removed from the board (even if it is the player’s own piece). The laser is fired only once a turn. The turn is over whether a piece is hit or not.
  • The game ends when the laser hits a Pharaoh. The winner is the player whose Pharaoh wasn’t hit. A player who hits his or her own Pharaoh is out of luck. If (when using the Beamsplitter expansion) you manage to destroy both your own Pharaoh AND your opponent’s Pharaoh at the same time, you still lose because you killed yourself. The game board will be consumed by the color of the winner, to indicate that the territory disputed by the two rulers has been conquered by one.

Extra Game Play for Khet 1.0 Setups

  • The Scarab/Horus piece can move into a square occupied by Pyramid or Obelisk of either color. The Pyramid or Obelisk then goes to the square the Scarab/Horus piece started from. In other words, the Scarab and Horus pieces can swap places with an adjacent Pyramid or Obelisk, but not with an adjacent Pharaoh, Scarab, or Horus. Neither piece rotates when swapping places.
  • The Obelisks have the power to stack or unstack on top of each other. In the stacked configuration the player may either move the stacked Obelisks as one unit one square in any direction or unstack the top Obelisk moving it one square in any direction while leaving the bottom Obelisk in its place. If a stacked Obelisk is hit, only the top Obelisk is removed from play leaving the bottom Obelisk to remain in its position on the board. You can only stack once, so there are no triple or quadruple stacks allowed. Only Obelisks of the same color may be stacked.

Extra Game Play for Khet 2.0 Setups

  • The Scarab/Horus piece can move into a square occupied by Pyramid or Anubis of either color. The Pyramid or Anubis then goes to the square the Scarab/Horus piece started from. In other words, the Scarab and Horus pieces can swap places with an adjacent Pyramid or Anubis, but not with an adjacent Pharaoh, Scarab, Horus, or Sphinx. Neither piece rotates when swapping places.
  • The Anubis pieces are impervious to the laser from the front. If a laser hits the front of an Anubis, it will NOT be destroyed. If the laser hits the rear or sides of an Anubis, it will be destroyed.
  • Sphinx pieces can be rotated, but cannot be moved. The Sphinx can only point across or down the board, it can never be pointed off of the board.

 

Example of a Khet game in progress.


 

Eye of Horus Beamsplitter Expansion

To use the Eye of Horus Beamsplitter Expansion, choose a setup that ends in “b” such as “Classic 2b.”

The Eye of Horus pieces look and behave exactly like Scarab pieces, except that they have the Eye of Horus on top instead of a Scarab beetle. When a laser hits an Eye of Horus, it will be split into two laser beams. The beam can be split multiple times by passing through Eye of Horus pieces multiple times. Each laser split has the chance of destroying a piece.
 

Settings

Khet board owners can touch the Khet game and choose “Settings” from the menu to change options on the game. The following options are available:

  • Timeout On: Enable game timeout. Game will automatically reset after an hour of no moves being made.
  • Timeout Off: Disable timeout option.
  • Quiet On: Disable some of the game’s local chat output so it is less spammy.
  • Quiet Off: Allow all local chat from the game.
  • Scale: Resize the game board from 1m to 30m in size. WARNING: Like all mesh objects, the land impact of the game will increase as it gets bigger, and decrease as it gets smaller! After the game reaches ~6m in size, it will enable physics on all of the game pieces so they can be collided with.
  • Colors: Change the colors of the playing pieces. Khet by default has silver and ruby pieces. Other options include Deflexion colors (silver and gold), Nile colors (orange and blue) and Royal colors (green and purple).
  • Update: Check for newer versions of Khet.

 

Land Impact

Like all mesh objects, Khet’s Land Impact (or Prim Equivalence) is determined by how large it is. At the default size of 3 meters (longest edge of the board) it is 32 LI. This may seem like a lot, but it is actually LESS than the old non-mesh Khet. The old Khet board is 13 prims when not in use, but adds an extra 28 prims during a game, making it 41 Land Impact. By contrast, the mesh version of Khet is now 32 prims when a game is in progress.

The game can be resized down to a minimum of 1m in size (the same size as the old Khet) or up to as much as 30m in size (the size of a house). As Khet gets bigger, it will have a greater land impact. At house size it will be as much as 200 Land Impact during a game, depending on which setup you load. When the game passes 6 meters in size, it will automatically enable collision physics on all of the playing pieces. The collision physics are disabled when the board is smaller to prevent the physics calculations from increasing the game’s land impact.
 

Bug Fixes and Upgrades

Most owners of K.R. Engineering games are entitled to free upgrades to newer versions of the game. Simply touch the game board and click “Settings,” then “Update” to check for new updates.

If you are having problems with your game, please search this knowledge base or contact us for product support. If the problem you are having has not previously been encountered, a new game version will be released with a fix as soon as possible, and you may qualify for a bug bounty.

DISCLAIMER: The appearance and feature set of games are subject to revision between versions as the capabilities of Second Life change over time. Please see the detailed ChangeLog for your particular game before upgrading. By upgrading. you are agreeing to accept any and all changes that have been imposed on the updated version of the game.
 

Additional Questions

If you have more questions, please use the search tool on our main page to browse our many helpful articles and FAQ entries. If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for, you can contact us for assistance.
 

ChangeLog

You can find the ChangeLog for Khet by visiting this article.