Filed under: Fun, Games, Kids, Time-Wasters, Web
Learn to Fly - Time Waster
by Jason Clarke Jun 15th 2009 at 12:00PM
There's a certain style of time waster that I find incredibly addicting - those in the "see how far it can fly" genre. Two previous favorites include Shopping Cart Hero, and Air Voltare. If you like those games, you're going to love today's Time Waster, Learn to Fly.
In Learn to Fly, you play the part of a penguin who is not happy to be a flightless bird. Your job is to research the best way to achieve flight, which in this case involves sliding down a ramp and flying through the air with a glider strapped to your back and rockets strapped to your sides.
There are 4 increasingly harder levels to master in Learn to Fly, but as you go you can purchase power-ups for your equipment and your abilities. To beat each level, you must exceed set goals for height, distance traveled, length of flight, and top speed. To win the game you must travel at least 6000 feet, and you then receive a rating based on how many "days" (test flights) it takes you to get there. It took me 25 days to achieve flight.
I have to say, this sort of time waster often does not have an end goal, but rather continues on ad infinitum. It's nice to know that once you hit the 6000 foot mark, you've won the game. How many days will it take you to achieve flight?
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chad said 1:00PM on 6-15-2009
Okay, I have to ask....Does anyone know a good method of getting access to these flash files when the Coporate stiffs are blocking access to the page they're hosted on? Does Google Cache store the swf (or other common types)? I think most Anonymizers/proxies are blocked as well. Just curious if anyone else had the same problem....and possibly a solution.
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Lucien said 1:33PM on 6-15-2009
took me 36 days :( nice time-waster to play during my lunch hour
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tingrin87 said 1:59PM on 6-15-2009
well, that was an hour well spent
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Matt S. said 4:36PM on 6-15-2009
Well, after 34 days and $122,760, the farthest I can seem to get is 5600ft. I finished getting all the upgrades and achievements at about 28 days. Just couldn't for some reason make it to 6000ft.
But good overall time-waster!
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Praveen Premchandran said 10:39PM on 6-15-2009
aaw... took me 42 days!! but i figured how best to glide only when i was at the 30th day, so it wasn't too bad overall ;)
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basroil said 11:06PM on 6-15-2009
22 days and 19/20 accomplishments. key is to get acceleration and glide first, then height and rockets. when you have the best glider and rocket pack, then work on everything else, and you get maxed early on. use half your rocket to get up to about 175 feet at about 15% resistance (speed should still be about 150 by that point), then glide as long as you can at 0-2% (you'll fall and slow down). if the speed is less than about 80 (or whatever you want to keep it at), angle up and use a rocket, so you gain both height and speed. one or two of those before 4000 and you'll be clear for 6k. you will even finish at about 20ft and 50mph, so you could have gone maybe 6500.
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