William and Sly

The teleporting runestones William has arranged in the forest area around his cabin have been disabled. William suspects area gnomes as the culprits, and asks his animal pal Sly the fox to see what he can do about re-activating them. And the player is off in the woods, a red streak amongst the green, running and jumping up tree boughs and ravine cliffsides, digging through concealed underground tunnel systems (where the gnomes have hidden their precious and eminently collectible mushrooms!) in search of the inert runestones and the sparkling randomly-spawning fairyflies needed five at a time in order to restore them.

Sly isn't the only one who likes fairyflies, however; flat areas are inhabited by Darklings, hungry blob-like enemies who don't injure Sly but feed on any fairyflies he may happen to have around his person. These Darklings can be vaporized by being touched by Sly following his glowing-white triumph immediately following the restoration of a runestone.

Though the game's primary goal can be completed in short order, following the restoration of the runestones and overcoming a jarring boss battle in William's storage cave, it has many challenges for completists, including finding all of the mushrooms. Achieving this will necessitate not only acquiring an aerial power-up, but locating and tripping gnomish switches to restore glowing magical bridges leading to flying islands, where the final few mushrooms can be located. Additionally, many of them are hidden "in plain sight" - inside locked treasure chests strewn intermittently across the landscape, which require the use of foraged keys to unlock.