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Balloons!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #8 | 4.254 | 4.254 |
| Innovation | #10 | 4.141 | 4.141 |
| Overall | #14 | 4.012 | 4.012 |
| Fun | #20 | 4.042 | 4.042 |
| Game Design | #22 | 4.056 | 4.056 |
| Audio | #65 | 3.789 | 3.789 |
| Graphics | #222 | 3.789 | 3.789 |
Ranked from 71 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The gameplay of Balloons! involves building structures to protect your balloons against a coming storm.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
with the exception of sound effects from zapsplat and the font from google fonts, everything was made from scratch, yes
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Comments
This gives the same vibes and type of fun as Bad Piggies (and even has red spherical birds) and Bad Piggies has over 100 million downloads on Google Playstore... You can imagine why I like this game. I love the sandbox nature of the game as well, there is never only one solution past the tutorialized sections. If only the tutorial didn't make you click through all those text boxes repeatedly...
Definitely one of my biggest issues with the game is the text dump at the beginning. There's definitely a better way to go about that and get the player actually playing faster. Thanks for playing!
Had a great time playing through this!!
Loved the humor throughout :)
Fantastic work on the overall feel/vibe of the game. Art, audio, dialogue is all fantastic.
My only minor feedback is that at times it did feel like there was only one solution to a given problem and I needed to just trial/error until I found the intended solution. This just took away the feeling of player agency. Maybe there were multiple ways of solving things but it never felt that way, hope that makes sense.
Otherwise it was still SUPER fun to play through and get to the end, well done on your entry! :D
I actually did envision this as a one-solution puzzle type game more than a sandbox so that feeling is very much intentional. I was worried that the solutions would be a little difficult to arrive at so this is still valuable feedback. Thanks for playing!
Great game! It reminds me of this slime game I forget the name of that had a similar concept.
I didn't mind having to remember the storm pattern and the general trial and error approach to the game
Love the humour and the general vibe
One of my favourite submissions so far
Very interesting building puzzle game. I can easily imagine this being released on mobiles. It's funny and such a great use of the theme. Just incredibly imaginative. I had a lot of fun playing this.
In terms of shortfalls, it does get difficult to keep track of all of the hazards, as they come so fast. Maybe show some indication of where most of the balloons were burst. Another issue is that solutions may tend to become very alike. Meaning that people playing separately will tend towards having quite similar constructions. It's also very trial and error based, which can be fun, but can also become rather frustrating.
Obviously, you'd have to improve the visuals, but I think you know that already.
You have a great game, but will grapple with quite a few design challenges.
I did consider adding indicators for where hazards were going to show up, but I kind of liked making the player remember where everything goes as a little extra layer of difficulty so I scrapped that. The sequence does get long, I'll give you that. I do like the idea of showing where you lost balloons last time, though.
As for similar solutions, that was mostly intended. I built the storm around what I wanted the player to do and how I thought the player might respond, so it was very deliberate. It is a puzzle game after all. Having said that, I've enjoyed seeing a lot of different solutions from people and I think it's really cool and exciting that people have found alternate ways to win the game.
Thanks for playing!
Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! If you wanted to look at it again in the future heres the vod timestamped to your game
And clip from the stream
https://www.twitch.tv/ategondev/clip/TrappedHomelyGuanacoTheTarFu-o01FCWQCjLaMTG...
The most fun I've had so far, a really comedic and thinking experience. Managed to find a wild solution, box them all in and pray.
Great submission.
I like this one a lot lol. Nice job!
I love this so much! I don't know if it was your intention but this reminds me of those classic troll platformers that would just randomly kill you in a funny way, except now it's an actual puzzle. I got stuck with the piston platform, but I'll probably come back later and try to beat it. Incredible job!
Not those platformers specifically, I was more influenced by that password game where it would keep adding new requirements when you came up with a valid password. Some similar trollage for sure. Thanks for playing!
This is a very well polished game, with an idea that I genuinely found myself enjoying and thinking about. I got stuck at one point where I couldn't move a block out of the ground, but that's the only bug I found in my 20 minutes of playtime, so well done!
Ah yeah, I thought I fixed that like three times but it always came back. Sorry you ran into that problem!
Fun game, very satisfying when you build past an obstacle. The game art and overall style was cohesive and I enjoyed the humor in the help dialog. The implementation of the theme was spot on. The physics seems to be non-deterministic as I would get slightly different behavior between runs without changing anything. I would have preferred a bit more granularity in the grid snap on placement. Overall an excellent submission, great work!
Hee-ho. Very cool game. Nice visual. Thanks for good experience
I like this game a lot, clearly a lot of thought has gone into it. It's really fun trying out different ways of protecting the balloons against all the threats, great job!
This is a really wild concept. I enjoyed playing this a lot. I got as far as the two spike traps that open up after the second lava pillar. I think the piston piece of wood keeps messing me up, every time I push it, it just moves the balloons all over... haha, i'm probably going to come back and play this some more later. I like the squeaky noise the balloons make when they are bouncing around. Overall, well done!
Absolutely fantastic! Every moment of this game feels like a well-crafted experience. The creativity and effort put into it are clearly visible.
This is my favourite game so far! The little balloons are so cute and I was so happy to win !
thank you! congrats for winning!
Great job with the puzzles! The sound design really complements the art, making for an engaging experience. I enjoyed how the challenges evolved throughout the game, keeping me on my toes. Looking forward to seeing more from you!
Good puzzle game. Nice sounds and art :)
This was a fun game to figure out! I like how the solutions build on themselves and previous challenges you faced are still present in the level. I did eventually figure out you could box the balloons in, and I saw you commenting on how you couldn't come up with a solution you liked. One idea I had was maybe playing the "Reset" animation when the game started rather than during the preparation phase. This way, you couldn't interact with the balloons before the storm happened. Anyways, I really liked the game.
I really liked keeping the previous challenges as well! I was going to do more "traditional" puzzle levels originally, but then I was inspired by that password game that went viral a while back.
The late reset might be a good idea. I'm worried that it might make the storm phase even longer (some have expressed annoyance at that) and honestly I do really like watching them bounce around in the build phase and the immediate drop into the chaos of the storm is pretty funny. Worth exploring if I can somehow get the best of both worlds though.
Thanks for playing!
This game kept me playing, it's really good fun. I love how it evolves as you get more pieces, feels really polished too.
Very frustrating but also fun. Love the seen hotdogs buttons :))
Very cool puzzle game, and the dialogue and art is all very cute. Great experience. The only thing I feel could definitely be improved is a fast forward feature of some kind. The later sequences make watching the previous ones all the more tedious. Overall great job!
I've seen a few requests for a fast forward feature now, I'll definitely think on it after the jam.