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Hot-Air Balloon Challenge's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment - How much you enjoyed playing this game. | #6 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
| Concept - How interesting or unique this game is. | #6 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #7 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
| Presentation - How well executed this game is. | #8 | 2.333 | 2.333 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What assets did you use in this project?
Hot Air Balloon and analogical Flight Instruments
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Comments
Well I think I can officially call myself a professional ballooner (balloonist??) now. Score of 1090 with 0 crashes! Once I realized the puzzle aspect of the game it really clicked. I can definitely see where you are going with this concept and I like it. It also looks like I was the only one to finish which means I'm raining champ right now.
If you are looking for feedback, I have a couple thoughts that might help if you continue to develop this in the future, which I hope you do. If you're not looking for feedback then skip right to the end for proof of my victory.
As Ian mentioned, having an alternative way to present the weather would help a lot. I did keep the weather report open most of the time to make sure I was in the correct altitude range.
I can also see where people would get a bit motion sick playing when it rotates to face the direction of the wind. I was definitely doing balloon donuts on the first level while being stuck between 2 wind directions when I was trying to figure it out. I understand rotating to face the direction is a way to show which direction you are traveling but you could probably accomplish something similar without rotating by using some in game context to show you changed direction. Ian had some good ideas there as well with visuals, audio, UI, etc. I'm a fan of how Valheim shows wind direction when you are boating:
Simple, straightforward and easy to understand when you're running away from sea serpents.
I did lose my bearings a few times when loosing sight of the target , especially when I was high up. It could be helpful to have some kind of outline or silhouette on a beacon, or something like that, on the target so you can see it through the basket. I used this free tool in my game:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/quick-outline-1154...
Let me know if you make some more levels so I can keep my title going. Proof of my victory:
Congrats!!! I'm not sure if I will keep going, but all good suggestions if I do!
Nice idea, the concept is really clever and I like the unique steering method by targeting the right altitude - that's a really cool idea.
In practice though, it was quite a hard game to play and I felt it might have helped having a more of a game friendly HUD to help with the navigation as the text weather report was quite a dry way of putting it. Also, given the balloon ride itself made me feel quite queasy (and I was sitting down), I also felt I had to remember all the altitudes and directions they'd take me relative to the compass and it was a bit too much to take on. It was on the edge of being too difficult than fun for me...
I do think the idea is really cool though and I think presenting it in a different, more player friendly way would work wonders on this game... Maybe particles nearby showing the wind direction, or some faint arrows in the sky that become more obvious the closer to get (just thinking out loud here) - but I feel it needs a little more help to the player to cross the bar of it being more fun than difficult would be great on this.
Also, I feel there should be a limit to how fast the balloon moves - currently, it can reach speeds that make me feel quite sick. I think the game will still be really playable if there was a much slower limit to the balloon and perhaps sub-targets to reach before landing on the land target directly.
Overall a really great idea with just a few practical issues getting in the way - a great job though!
I agree (and changed it a few times during the process). I found some concepts for presenting visual weather forecasts but ran out of time to see if I could implement them.
I couldn't play due to motion sickness, but I'm not sure there is anything you could have done differently to mitigate it much, since teleportation doesn't make sense in this context. I probably will never be able to play anything in the transportation genre.
I use the Quest for standing/untethered movement, so I always default to standing. This meant my head was clipping into the 'thrusters'/exhausts of the hot-air balloon throughout the flight. Once it started to turn while ascending, there didn't seem to be a way to stop it, which meant it rapidly became a test of VR vertigo. I've got good VR legs, but that wasn't very pleasant. A hot air balloon should be as pretty an experience as possible, considering how limited your interactions can be. Some clouds (which can help define altitude gains), some water/hills/mountains to vary the terrain below, maybe a simple procedural sun?
Thanks for the feedback! Clouds is an interesting idea that I hadn't though of. The wind is the real challenge of the game, and the real challenge of hot-air ballooning. There is probably a way to scale the balloon relative to a persons height as well.
I got the first one. I tried the second. Missed badly, tried again, got super sick, had to quit VR for a bit. Will try again later.
Thanks for giving the game a try. There are only three levels at this point and they get progressively harder. Sorry you felt sick, I usually play sitting down.