Can you LEARN TO FLY?
Learn To Fly is a trilogy of games made by Lightbringer Studios.
The first Learn to Fly
involves a penguin, who has gotten sick of life on the ground, and wants to take to the air.
Learn 2 Fly continues directly after the first game, having the first game's penguin get revenge on the obstacles that slowed him down.
The three-quel, Learn to Fly 3 (Online, Steam Release), is set towards flying to the moon.
A spin-off titled "Learn to Fly: Idle" was released as well, featuring a cannon simply shooting at icy things until they break.
Tropes the three games share:
- The Determinator: Dear lord, the Penguin
- Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: Getting achievements awards the player with Bonus Points which can be spent for additional upgrades.
- Variable Mix: The game's music picks up instruments depending on how fast you're going.
Tropes from Learn To Fly:
- Downer Ending: After flying the 6000m, the penguin crashed head-first into an iceberg, landing him in the hospital.
- Peculiar Penguin: The series revolves around a penguin who is trying to fly through various devices including gliders and jetpacks. Some of the games also involve the penguin attempting to destroy icebergs as well.
Tropes from Learn 2 Fly:
- Balloonacy: A balloon functions as the first tier of passive glider. Interestingly, a balloon is also the first tier of one-shot boosts, with an upgraded version available through the Omega Catalog.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Clicking on your money in the shop earns you a dollar, and the achievement "Give an Inch...". Clicking on it a second time removes a dollar, and earns the achievement He'll Take A Yard.
- Easter Egg: Clicking the penguin's beak unlocks all modes from the start and gives you an achievement.
- Final Boss: The final obstacle is the huge wall of ice that stopped the penguin in the first game. Fittingly, it's the hardest to destroy.
- Friend in the Black Market: The Bonus Shop salesman falls somewhere between this and an Honest John.
- Global Warming: The penguin is on a quest to destroy icebergs, and one of the upgrades that can help him achieve this is making the Bonus Shop man buy things like cars to make icebergs melt faster. That said, there's a paper that says "Maybe just wait for global warming?" between launches.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Omega items, unlockable by spending 1000 bonus points, have the highest stats but also cost a lot.
- Joke Item: The Brick. Unlockable by clicking an empty spot in the Gliders menu, it's completely pathetic with no real top speed or flight capabilities. That said, you do get an achievement for destroying an obstacle with it.
- No Animals Were Harmed: A message may sometimes appear saying that "No penguins were harmed in the making of this game. The fake sandbag-penguin however is being thrown purposely at icebergs, and it hurts its feeling (sic)…"
- Parasol Parachute: An Umbrella can be purchased, focusing as the second tier of passive glider (above the balloon).
- Shout-Out:
- If you fall, there's a chance that Zeus as a penguin will tell you to fly some more and lift you off the ground. He says "Rise from Your Grave" which is ripped straight from Altered Beast (1988). Originally, this was thought to be triggerable once, but it can be triggered twice - once for flying forwards, and once for flying backwards.
- If you run out of fuel at a high altitude, ROB 64 will tell you "Location confirmed. Sending supplies." Like the other, it can only happen once per direction you fly. This one is also a little more rare. Unlike the above, this only happens once per save file.
- The Omega version of the Whirlybird 512 is called The Chopper. Its description,
as one might expect, is "GET TO THE CHOPPA!!!11!1!one!" (sic).
- Warm-Up Boss: The snowman is the first obstacle you have to break and is extremely easy to destroy.
Tropes from Learn To Fly 3:
- Character Customization: You can customise how your penguin looks like and what it wears, as well as how your ship looks like.
- Easter Egg: Clicking the logo and holding it for five seconds unlocks all modes from the start.
- High-Tech Hexagons: The most upgraded form of the glider has a hexagon pattern, and the description "You know it's high tech because of the hexagon pattern."
- Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Omega brick is a reference to them, as it has 666 in stats called Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.
- Infinity -1 Sword: The space items. They are the most expensive items you don't have to clear the game to unlock and their stats are more than enough to reach a good height, but they're not the best.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Omega items are back. This time, you get them in card packs, which are received when you clear a mode, but they have the best stats again.
- Kill Screen: This happens when you reach an altitude/distance of 107,375,182 units, due to that being the maximum possible value for any position in Flash. If you reach that cap vertically, the results are relatively mundane; either you freeze in place(if your shuttle was oriented straight up when you hit the cap), or you start going sideways(if your shuttle was tilted in either direction when you hit the cap). Either way, unless you steer(which will cause you to start going sideways if you froze when you hit the cap), you won't lose any more fuel—you could keep going indefinitely unless you used up all of your fuel via steering or aborted the launch yourself. If you reached the cap horizontally, however, the results are far more interesting; you're treated to the sky trying to be the ground before the game locks up and forces you to refresh.
- Sandbox Mode: A sandbox mode can be unlocked in which you can raise or lower many attributes such your speed, gravity, the amount of obstacles and control power. Just don't raise them too much or you will crash the game.
- Shout-Out:
- The penguin has costumes based on Goku and Superman.
- Flappy Bird as well as Goon and Stork from Yoshi's Island appear as obstacles in the sky.
- The achievement line called Gotta Go Fast!, earned for flying fast enough.
- Special Thanks: A unique variation as it's not in the credits - you may see a blimp saying "Special thanks to Earn To Die 2."
Tropes from Learn To Fly Idle:
- Diminishing Returns for Balance: After a research upgrade reaches level 10, each subsequent level becomes less powerful, despite still costing 2500 RP. Upgrade Cost Reduction level 10 lowers prices by 25%, but level 100 (the maximum) lowers them by 75%.
- Discount Card: Leveling up Upgrade Cost Reduction in Research results in upgrade prices being lowered by 2.5% for each normal level.
- Flash of Pain: Every object flashes red when a shot hits it.
- Just One More Level!: The achievement received for playing for two hours is a reference to this term, as it's called "Just one last shot…"
- Number of the Beast: The final object, Dodo Homeworld 666, has 66,666,666,666P HP and gives 66,666,666E money when destroyed.
- Oddball in the Series: The only game in the series that isn't a launcher.
- One Bullet at a Time: The number of shots on the screen is limited by the shots stat. Upgrading it and the speed the shots fly at lets you fire more often.
- Shout-Out: Ice-BORG's design is a reference to Terminator.
