In the world of Helycia, the World Trees' sap is being stolen by the cosmic trash collector Dyer and their branches polluted by trash ejected from his cosmic trash can, Megabin. In response, the World Trees created four buds in order to recover the tree sap and put an end to Dyer's mischief.
Fly'N is a puzzle platformer by Ankama Animation that was released in 2012 after being Greenlit on Steam. The game shares elements of its art style with Rayman and Botanicula. You play as one of four buds created from a World Tree, each of whom possesses a different ability that allows the player to surmount obstacles in a series of levels, collecting pollen and Helys, which are lighter-than-air balls of energy. Some levels require the player to combine the abilities of different Buds, which is done by spawning a different type of bud at a checkpoint. At the end of each level, you are given a score based on how many collectibles you got, how much time it took to complete the level, and how many times you died.
All four of the Buds can use double-jumping and gliding to traverse the levels. They can also switch between different modes of vision: Innate, where the colors are vivid, the platforms are solid and the clouds are transparent, and Subtle, where the music becomes more bass-heavy, the colors are inverted, and the Buds can stand on wisps of cloud and pass through platforms that were otherwise solid. Subtle vision also allows them to travel along wind streams.
The playable characters include:
Flyn - The first of the buds that the player controls. Flyn can use his song to infuse objects with balls of energy called Helys, which makes them lighter than air. This ability is used to clear a path through the levels by repairing the damage done by Dyer spreading garbage over the world tree. Flyn's song is also used to 'wake up' friendly NPCs who are hidden around the levels, which then reveal more of the pollen scattered throughout each level.
Lyft - Lyft can reach areas far up sheer cliff faces by sticking to walls and crawling along them.
Ywok - The damage sponge. Once inflated, Ywok bounces off any surface, destroys breakable blocks on contact and may touch otherwise lethal hazards.
Nyls - Nyls's part of the World Tree is the last to be explored. Nyls' can dash through the air in the form of a rocket up to three times (though the range is short) and can charge through breakable blocks. Because each rocket may be lined up and fired in any direction, he is often required for traversing a long series of obstacles.
This game provides examples of:
- Advancing Wall of Doom: In the form of a rising tide of garbage. Levels featuring these take place three times per world, and in these you need to rescue a friendly NPC being harassed by Dyer at the end.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Dyer the sentient hair dryer. Three more animated appliances appear in the ending: A canister vacuum cleaner named Hoova who is implied to be Dyer's girlfriend; and a refrigerator and a camera who both have No Name Given.
- Arcadia: The game takes place in trees inhabited by peaceful natives.
- Badass Adorable: The buds are very competent at traversing areas with more obstacles than floor.
- Bonus Stage: If you complete a level with an Advancing Wall of Doom without dying once, you unlock a bonus level. These are extra difficult or introduce an unexpected use of the usual game mechanics.
- Boss Battle: At the end of each world, you must disable a machine remotely operated by Dyer, and then go inside it to find the Self-Destruct Mechanism.
- Brand X: In one of the boss fights, Dyer is using a silver-colored tablet computer with a pear logo.
- Colossus Climb: The final boss battle.
- It's also a climb for Dyer too. As the player gets higher and higher, they'll see Dyer happily skip up some stairs to the top inside the Mega Bin. Once the player starts to enter through the Mega Bin's mouth, Dyer also jumps down and to the second half of the final boss level.
- Cosmetic Award: Your reward for collecting Helys.
- Deadly Gas: Vents release a reddish gas with similar properties to the superheated garbage. Ywok can pass through them in ball form.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying, except during the Advancing Wall of Doom levels, does nothing other than affect your final score. It has almost no effect on gameplay (there are a few levels which require running through a section without dying to collect all pollen/Helys) and does not factor into any achievements except one that requires you to die 50 times in one level.
- Developer's Room: There is one for each world, and it unlocks once you complete all three bonus levels in a world.
- Developer's Foresight: Sing to creatures at the end of the Advancing Wall of Doom levels. They sing along or do a dance.
- Evil Laugh: Dyer is a master of this. And it's adorable!
- Final-Exam Boss: You need to have a good grasp on all four characters in the final level, because the game really forces you to use them to their fullest.
- Green Thumb: Flyn is able to make plants grow.
- Hero of Another Story: Believe it or not, Dyer himself! His story is told in the purchasable art pieces, along with a flash game released on Newgrounds. The two show how he and his friends were created and what drove Dyer to villany. Long story short: originally they were trying to save Helycia by collecting the garbage that was dumped by the same aliens that tossed out their previously inanimate bodies and dispose of it in the sun. Unfortunately, a loose Hely got too close to the sun and exploded, taking out all of the garbage collectors save for Dyer. He rescued them, put them on life support, and Fly'n takes place just as he flies to the first World Tree to begin harvesting the Helys.
- Karma Houdini: Turns out Dyer was collecting Helys to try to wake up some apparently coma-ridden friends. Okay, that excuses the theft. What never gets addressed is the sheer joy he obviously takes from terrorising the creatures of the World Trees.
- Playable Menu: The Cocoon, which contains a level select screen, world select screen, illustration viewer, and (when they are unlocked) bonus level access and developer's room. You can also meet the friendly NPCs you rescued earlier.
- Mechanical Lifeform: The villain Dyer is a sentient hair dryer and he has three friends who are a vacuum cleaner, fridge and camera.
- Nature Spirit: The Buds are a personification of their home tree, and though they can be killed by garbage, they can respawn at will, so they are essentially immortal.
- Necromantic: The who reason Dyer was collecting Helys in the first place was to wake up his coma-ridden friends, who almost died for good if not for his timely intervention. And an Easter Egg in the cocoon of the last level and how he acts at the ending highly implies that the vacuum was either his girlfriend or wife.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After getting captured by Dyer after beaing the fourth boss, the Buds unite their Subtle vision to trap the Mega Bin. It's not exactly clear how, but this causes the Mega Bin, the collected garbage, and many of the Helys to form a new World Tree, made made out of junk, which is just perfect for a Mechanical Lifeform like Dyer. Nice job! As his evil laughter is indicating, you just gave him something he likes!
- Somewhat subverted by the end, however. Thanks to Fly'n, Dyer's friends are alive and well and he even sings a song to transform the junk world into a mixture of plant and metal. Dyer and his friends seem happy enough with their new World Tree.
- No-Damage Run: You get a score bonus if you run through a level without dying, and the bonus levels can only be unlocked by not dying on an Advancing Wall of Doom level.
- 100% Completion: Gathering all the collectibles on a level rewards you with Helys, which you can use to unlock game-related illustrations.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The game's full of 'em.
- Single-Biome Planet: Each of the game's world trees have a unique style of botanical architecture, only one of which is green and leafy. Outside of those, there is also a Garbage Planet.
- Tears of Joy: Dyer sheds many of them once his friends are alive and well at the end of the game. Hoova, the vacuum cleaner, sheds some herself just before the two hug each other.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The final boss is pretty bad about this. It's practically a guarantee you will die at least once trying to figure out the sequence to get to the end.
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: You can do this by pressing the float button while running on a flat surface.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: Dyer's continued antics are the whole reason for the plot.
- Villainous Breakdown: After you beat the final level, Dyer, who is shedding some angry tears if you look quickly enough, blows Fly'n off his feet, literally blows his top before screaming in rage, falls on his stomach to beat the on the ground, then gets up to cry a bit before he resumes shaking in rage. Fortunately, by this point, his newly repaired friends gets his attention and things are mostly okay from that point on.
- Wall Crawl: Lyft's ability. To a lesser extent, all of them can climb upside-down on certain thin platforms.
- World Tree: Where the game's levels are set.
