Kyra Sprite Engine is the drawing and rendering component of 2D and quasi-3D
games. Examples of this kind of game are Civilization, Donkey Kong (classic
arcade), Pharaoh, Zeus, Warcraft, Diablo, Frogger, and Pirates!, among many
others. It is so called because the "characters" or "little men" are
referred to as "sprites".

Simple and Easy to Use. Kyra has a clean and simple C++ interface. Or at
least as simple as an engine can be. It comes with several examples to get
you started, as well as full documentation for the API and the tool chain.

Fully Featured. It is fully featured, supporting top-down, side, and
isometric rendering. It supports the 'Sprite' as its basic type, but also
supports Tiles and user-drawn Canvases. It can draw to a traditional bitmap
surface, and supports OpenGL hardware acceleration.

Industrial Strength. Kyra has a complete tool chain including a sprite
editor and encoder. It's fast and capable, with specialized code for
rendering and rectangle updates.

Kyra 2 is an evolution of the API and features. There are some API changes,
but it is generally friendly to the previous API with minor tweaks. The
exception is widgets: they are completely redone in version 2. If you're
starting with Kyra, start with Kyra version 2.x.