Balloon Co. [gaming division]

I assume this is a reference to the wonderful Twine horror game "The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo." Just in case you are curious about reality:

It actually happened. I don't remember how I caught MissingNo, I remember it was hard, but I found some way to do so (Maybe I used a Masterball? Maybe I used a status condition?). After I did, its icon in my party was a person, in battle, multiple pokemon had their sprites flipped, there were graphical glitches on the overworld, and when I went to the safari zone, when I tried to leave, the glitches made it impossible to leave the fenced area outside the Safari Zone in Fuschia City.

Of course, as this very game states, this all sounds just like a rumor. I understand if you don't believe me.

mew's under the truck comments · Replied to aza in mew's under the truck comments

Trust me, be happy you could not catch missingno. Having a pokemon with 2 water guns and 2 sky attacks is not worth getting fully trapped in the safari zone. Child me ruined my game...

mew's under the truck comments · Posted in mew's under the truck comments

The rumors I remember from my childhood:
~A kid who said if you mailed your Pokemon game to a person, when it returned, you could travel to a new island that had a fat nurse joy and a Pokemon that doesn't faint other Pokemon, but kills them by devouring their souls.
~In Super Mario 64, if you got 100 coins, Mario would pick his nose. Also, in addition to Bowser, there were Bowser family members who had their own unique boss battles. In one battle, the Bowser family are doing a line dance and you have to trip them doing the crouch attack move. Also, a weird fight against a Baby Bowser where you make him cry before Mama Bowser jumps in.

LANCER Action Reference Sheet comments · Replied to HelioSpectral in LANCER Action Reference Sheet comments

That is a very good point. Personally, I think just removing the "can't move between the tech" wording solves the issue, since can't implies unable, but like you said, it is rarely useful to use a full tech in that way, so it probably can stay just fine.

Roles & Responsibilities comments · Replied to Heckin Viv in Roles & Responsibilities comments

Thank you.

Roles & Responsibilities comments · Posted in Roles & Responsibilities comments

"Narrative and Plot" responsibilities seem like they go hand in hand with "Hooks and Spotlight" Do you have any examples how you separate the two with your group?

Lancer Tactics community · Posted in Hoping for Hexes!

I feel very few people who enjoy grids will speak up about them, but I personally think the grid system works really well and would 100% prefer time spent trying to make hex happen instead went into polishing or adding to the game. That said, if you do spend time on hexes and they are important to you, I will not be upset.

LANCER Action Reference Sheet comments · Replied to Balloon Co. [gaming division] in LANCER Action Reference Sheet comments

Also, this isn't needed for a player sheet, but keep in mind, Full tech works slightly different for NPCs: they are not allowed to do the same tech option, though they can use 2 different invades, because they count as different types of actions for NPCs. https://lancer-faq.netlify.app/ "Can NPCs do the same Tech Attack twice in one turn?"

LANCER Action Reference Sheet comments · Posted in LANCER Action Reference Sheet comments

This is incredibly helpful. However, I think there is a misunderstanding for Full Tech. (pg 71 Core):

"FULL TECH

When you use FULL TECH , you perform multiple tech

actions or a single, more complex action.

To use FULL TECH , choose two QUICK TECH options or

a single system or tech option that requires FULL TECH

to activate. If you choose two QUICK TECH options,

you can choose the same option multiple times."
The "you can choose" means you have the option to use the same option twice, but you are not locked into the same option twice. It contrasts with attacking, where you are unable to fire the same gun twice. Rules as written, you can, for example, scan and lock on with a full tech, or scan and scan two different mechs.

You Are Welcome comments · Replied to ^densch in You Are Welcome comments

Balloon Co. [gaming division]3 years ago

A message from Balloon Co. [marketing department]
The following is a completely automated message, please do not believe this message was written by a human. After all, automated messages are a sign of how big and important a company we are, since we can afford to use robots to communicate.

Hello Balloon Co. [gaming division] game enjoyer! We have detected automatically with computers and not manually by checking the comment section that you have attempted to access a previous Balloon Co. [gaming division] game jam, as gamevertised by "You Are Welcome"

Unfortunately, our gamevertisment was so strong, it lasted well beyond the game jam, which concluded years ago.

Hiding the location of the gamejam from corporate lawyers working in the commercial contest was a necessity at the time it was launched.
However, this does mean that gamers who are interested in the FULL history of Balloon Co. [gaming division] struggle to unearth this important point in our past. While you were able to solve the URL puzzle, you reminded us that there may be other Balloon Co. [gaming division] fans who long to find the old game jam, but are for whatever-reason-we-will-not-judge-them-for unable to enjoy "You Are Welcome"
Luckily, companies that are not Balloon Co. are often shortsighted and not historically minded such as ourselves. We love gambling, and have decided to go ALL IN on betting the lawyers that work at the Indie Game Making Contest NO LONGER GLANCE at 2018 pages, like this one. Thus, we are proud to present:
THE URL FOR OUR CONCLUDED GAMEJAM IF YOU WANT TO FIND IT WITHOUT PLAYING "You Are Welcome": https://itch.io/jam/bc20182019

Thank you for paving the way for future Balloon Co. [gaming division] aficionados to choose to fish in "You Are Welcome" not because they need the link, but because "You Are Welcome" is a worthy game experience. Now, when other Balloon Co. [gaming division] fanatics express their gratitude to YOU for making their lives easier, you can reply "You are welcome, as in the expression and not the amazing Balloon Co. [gaming division] game"

~Signed, robotically, Balloon Co. [marketing division] Beep boop, since those are words a real human would never type.

PS. While the Balloon Co. [gaming division] game jam has concluded, our lawyers are legally forcing us to say our case-by-case acceptance of late submissions is still legally binding, even years after the conclusion. Beep beep.

A YEAR OF SPRINGS comments · Replied to whalie in A YEAR OF SPRINGS comments

I highly recommend looking up ways to play non-steam games on steam. For DRM-free games, such as this, it is simple and fun to customize what art I choose for the launcher. It only gets complicated for games that need another launcher.

The Bookshelf Limbo comments · Posted in The Bookshelf Limbo comments

Balloon Co. [gaming division]4 years ago

I picked The Forensics Artist because my dad likes crime mystery novels, which I've given him a few in the past. Slightly surprised there weren't any sports comic options. I'm not into sports but I've given my dad some sports books in the past. Thanks for a very unique and cool game that makes you think!

The Balloon Co Reverse Exploitation Anti-Contest JAM community · Created a new topic Late submission requests

Balloon Co. [gaming division]5 years ago

If you would like to submit a game to the game jam, now that the deadline has past, post a link here and I can generate a URL that lets you enter it. Also provide how you would like us to send you the URL.

Parallel Duo Dungeon: Unbalenced and Unloaded Game Jam Edition jam comments · Posted in Parallel Duo Dungeon: Unbalenced and Unloaded Game Jam Edition jam comments

Balloon Co. [gaming division]5 years ago

See game page for full description.

The Balloon Co Reverse Exploitation Anti-Contest JAM community · Created a new topic Helping each other out: The Colaboration Thread.

This is a place were y'all can say hi, ask game creation questions, give game creation answers, share resources, and other collaboration activities. Have fun!

Across the Universe comments · Posted in Across the Universe comments

Ahoy there pianotm,

We are Balloon Co. [gaming division]! We heard you talkin’ smack about our game we made last year without @ing us on discord. Our research team has informed us that this behavior, on twitter, is known as “sub-tweeting.” Since this happened on discord, we shall take to calling it “sub-dissing.” Anyway, when we saw all those things you said about us in your sub-dis, IT HURT! (However, it did not hurt our bottoms, but did hurt our brains and pancreases). SO, we decided we did NOT like nursing a pain filled brain/pancreas, and that our best option was to fight back. We came up with a FANTASTIONDERFUL PLAN! We would play your tech demo, find all the things done badly with it, and then WE WOULD GO ON DISCORD AND SUB-CORD YOU!

THAT DID NOT WORK ON ACCOUNT OF THE FACT IT WAS TOO WELL MADE TO SUB-CORDDIS!

First off, you start off with a nicely done description of the events leading up to the incident, which allowed our imaginations to fill in the details. It gave us a chance to prime our understanding of Christina before meeting her.

The tech demo deals with very relatable themes. Living in a hostile location? Check! Managing our food, water, and sanity? TRIPLE CHECK! Language issues? Well, we’re fortunate enough to have a translator, so we don’t have to worry about that. It’s GREAT. We can say whatever we want, and people can understand us thanks to them! Like, even if we just type a bunch of gibberish, they can get our point across! LIKE THIS: [translator’s note: I’m not translating gibberish.]

That said, we can imagine what it would be like without a translator, and it’s SCARRIFYING! Not only would we have trouble promoting our games, we would have trouble talking with each other. So, it was comforting to see Christina found a work around. We also like how quickly she was able to empathize with someone who looked different to her.

We enjoyed the music in the game. One of the art school drop outs who work here even commented on how interesting it was that the darkness of the setting was balanced by the whimsy of the music. We don’t know what that nerd was talking about, though, we just liked it!

So, with all those good qualities, going on discord and not @ing you became a terrible idea. We were still in pain though. But then, as we made sure Christina got the sleep she needed, we realized WE HAD BEEN STAYING UP SUPER LATE TRYING TO COME UP WITH A PLAN TO HURT YOU FOR HURTING US! So, we decided to get some sleep and NOW OUR BRAINS FEEL FINE (some of our pancreases are still a little sore but overall feeling better). Thanks for reminding us that the best way to deal with pain is to take care of ourselves via taking care of a person on our computer, and nice job on your demonstration of your tech!

Imagine Cavern comments · Replied to RollPoll123 in Imagine Cavern comments

You should NOT have to apologize for causing trouble. Causing trouble is GREAT! Some of the best people in history caused trouble like... ok, turns out everyone on this shift were too busy being troublemakers in their schools to pay attention during history class. (Except for Vyacheslav, he claims he was home schooled by the not-so-great outdoors). But the important point is causing trouble makes things happen, while everything is the same if no one makes trouble! After all, we made "trouble" last year when we protested this game jam not allowing non-rpgmaker engines. And this year, they are allowing non-rpgmaker engines! We hope that this feat of revolution puts us in the history books some day, AND that there will still be troublemakers who neglect to remember us!

Imagine Cavern comments · Posted in Imagine Cavern comments

We are Balloon Co. [gaming division] and we are here to inform you that we were PRETTY PIPING HOT MAD AT YOU! Both last year and this year, we employed the marketing strategy of "release a game with a title screen with a generic looking RPG maker text with a black background to entice curiosity about the game." And yet, we came here and saw someone STOLE OUR IDEA! Furious, we flew to our fine lawyers to figure out how to fidangle a lawsuit against our found foe. They informed us that we would need to play the game, and we would have a case if it was similar to our game from last year (ie, protesting the game contest). So, we sat down, ready to find our evidence, but instead we found something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

First, we learned via a tutorial that we could use our imagination for something OTHER THAN MAKING GAMES! Then we learned that there were LIMITS to our imagination, when we found that, no matter what we imagined, we couldn't avoid going into the cavern despite the warning of our friend Thomas (who we imaged named was Tom-Tom). Then we found Tom-Tom, fought a troll and died.

But, in our depression from our death, we rebirthed into a discovery that OUR IMAGINATION WAS LIMITLESS! We turned that sad ending the game gave us, into a happy ending by imagining that Tom-Tom was captured because the humans were EVIL and the Trolls were the good guys! The Trolls killed us valiantly defending their home from people trying to steal their natural resources through mining without a permit! Thank you for this power to turn games that give you depressing endings into happy ones! We used this imagination to turn "You stealing our amazing marketing technique" into "You being inspired by our marketing technique and flattering us through the sincerest form of imitation!"

And that's the story of how we changed our anger at you into not anger at you!

You Are Welcome jam comments · Posted in You Are Welcome jam comments

IMPORTANT CLUE ABOUT THE PUZZLE YOU GET AT THE END OF THE GAME:

~don't believe his uppercase lies. lowercase is coolercase.

Tennis For Two? comments · Posted in Tennis For Two? comments

How does this have no comments this game is amazing!?

Spork community · Posted in [minor spirit of the game spoilers but not explicit spoilers] Confession(s)

Whew, some of our lawyers were worried that our submission would be rejected due to Corporate Buddies being misspelled, but it turns out they drunkenly stumbled upon an even more exclusive legal status they didn't realized existed: Corporate Buddiezzzz! You must have much smarter lawyers than we do!

By the way, Balloon Co. [marketing division] found out about our relationship, and tried to force us to advertise our website to you. Jokes on them: our website hosting got taken down MONTH ago! But then SOMEBODY who shall NOT BE NAMED but shall be on ice fishing duty for the next week blurted out that our Tumble website that for years is still up. (Despite our email to tech support, they still haven't fixed the weird misspelling. Whoever created the site must not know English as well as our translator, because they slept Tumble as "Tumblr" Anyway, while we are currently internet homeless, [marketing division] is legally obligating us (the worst kind of obligating) to reveal our Tumblour shelter for our games: https://balloonco.tumblr.com

Each of our games is very different in style and substance from each other, as well as from our current contest entry, so enjoyment of one may not transfer to the other. We also wish to impose no obligation on your employees to play our games due to the risk of us possibly being too busy/lazy to play your body of work beyond your contest entry. But hey, if something looks enjoyable, enjoy it!

~Balloon Co. [gaming division]

Note: This message has been cleared by Balloon Co. [marketing division] Replacement computer delivery has been sent. DELETE THIS NOTE BEFORE SENDING.

Spork community · Created a new topic [minor spirit of the game spoilers but not explicit spoilers] Confession(s)

Ahoy Tagurit Studios!

We at Balloon Co. [gaming division] have a confession to make. Before the unfortunate employee we put in charge of moderating our comment section read your comment, that person kinda almost banned you as soon as the word Studio was seen, due to you being a company. Now, we at Balloon Co. [gaming division] do not have anti-corporate bias, and thus are not companyphobes. In fact, some of our best divisions are part of a corporation, and some of our best computers come from corporations, and some of our favorite games are bootlegs of corporation made games, and some of our best friends we totally have are corporations, and some of US are technically corporation, and would an organization this defensive about being labeled companyphobes really be companyphobes? Of course not, what a silly question.

However, before the ban could happen, a miracle happened: the computer froze, which so rare it only happens about 12-34 times a day! And at that moment, the bored employee read your comment. Then, that employee ran into the kitchen and got [REDACTED, comment from lawyer: remember, no doxing names in public contests. First name privileges are reserved for Balloon Co. Uranium Plus Fan level membership emails ONLY] who was carving up the fish we caught this morning. Then [REDACTED], and [REDACTED], and [Ok, looks like I’m going to be doing a lot of this here. Time to use REDA as a shortened form of REDACTED] and soon the entire division was crowded around the by now unfrozen computer!

Reading your comment, we felt something deep down we never thought was possible. Some individuals of us have had this feeling for humans before, but this was different. We felt very hot, which we normally only feel when we have a fever or a computer catches on fire. And while there WAS a computer on fire at the time, it was too tiny a flame to explain our hearts pumping blood at a much higher rate than it usually does! It was then that we knew that Balloon Co. [gaming division] was IN LOVE with another COMPANY!!!

We instantly made plans to pilgrimage to the Tagurit Studio headquarters. After undocking, we’d all run the rest of the way so that we could steal flowers from someone’s yard, bring them to your main office, get down on our knees, and ask you to accept the terms of a merger or buyout (we would have been happy with either). We even had our game writer compose a grand poem where you doth teaches the computer monitors to glow bright and we’d all shout O Studio,Studio! Wherefore art thou Studio! (we hoped you were not neighbors to another company with Studio in it’s title or that would have been supes awkward).

But just as we opened the door to rush out, our lawyers slammed that door on our hopes and dreams and faces. It turns out our parent company, Balloon Co., has a stupid company rule called the CELIBACY policy. It stands for Corporate Expansion Liability Ban Anti-trust Commitment Yielding. Our lawyers explained that Balloon Co. worried so much about either becoming or helping to create a monopoly that they banned any company mergers or buyouts. Our love was forbidden love, and if us rebellious punks know one thing about forbidden love it’s that... you can’t do it, it forbidden!

So, our joy was converted into sorrow, and we tried to forget about you by drinking a whole lot of homebrewed bearberry schnapps. But then a very buzzed lawyer who gave us this horrible buzzkill of a message re-buzzed us by reminding us that there was no company policy on being Corporate Buddiezzzz! That cheered us up even though he was slurring that last word, and to celebrate we decided to play your contest game!

Now, in your game description, you mentioned that your game had a sense of surprise. Normally, we at Balloon Co. [gaming division] avoid surprising games at all costs because surprises are scary and we don’t like horror games. However, the fermented bearberries must have inhibited our fear survival instinct because we charged right into the face and elbows of danger! And a good thing we did! Thanks effect alcohol has on our brains!

This game is a marvel of post-modern deconstruction! So carefully, expectations are built, with tender loving care and with a base formed from gamer traditions as well as a roof crafted with promises of satisfaction, then EXPLODED with honey raining down because you’d expect a fire to rain down from an explosion but NOPE GET READY TO GET STICKY! Then you use the honey to build a honey fort to defend against honey badgers but then BOOM it is useless because the honey badgers are actually anti-matter badgers that DISSOLVE THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WHICH INCLUDES THE USELESS FORT! It’s a game that makes one hunger for answers that can only be temporarily sated with fanfics. It is an installation that forces the gamer to self reflect in a way few games/movies/books/songs/advertisements/instruction manuals/fortune cookies/letters in one’s alphabet soup are capable of. The sad reality is, as you said our game carried the risk of being criminally underrated in this contest, we fear your game will be mortal sinly oceandepthsrated in this contest. Still, just like how that ancient smart thinking person Plato inspired Play-Doh by trying to describe the sun to those people in the shadow puppet cave, you truly are virtuous for providing free of charge this art to the people and judges of this here contest. All of us at Balloon Co. [gaming division] salute you! And, since you were almost banned by him, we made sure [REDA! Whew, was worried I wasn’t going to be able to use my cool shorthand for REACTED after Bogdan stopped giving away employee names] ate the fish we had forgotten to cook all those hours ago as punishment, but he turned out ok and the rest of us were hungry so we need to come up with better punishments than “hoping he’ll get a tummy ache.”

PS. We saw in the credit menu of your game you mention that RPG maker doesn't include many dark skinned character for their default RPG maker sprites and that is absolutely true! We had to pay for their devious little "character reaction hub" to get a darker skinned protagonist for our last contest entry. We totally should have included this problem in our game/game description! Good job pointing that out.

The Golden Pearl comments · Posted in The Golden Pearl comments

Ahoy Mighty Palm,

We at Balloon Co. [gaming division] saw in a discord chat that you believe that our game should be something called DQ. At first, we thought it was an acronym for Dignified QWERTY and that you were complimenting us for using an English speaking styled QWERTY keyboard for making the game, rather than one of those Western European AZERTY keyboards. Our lawyers told us that it stood for disqualified, but we KNEW that couldn’t be true because disqualified is ONE word and an acronym with two letters should have two words. We were so confidant that we bet latrine duty on it! Unfortunately, our lawyers had a brick sized tome on contest jargon, and now we’re stuck cleaning the stinky stalls! Oh, and we realized that a fellow game designer wants us out of the contest!

That really hurt our feelings! This was our first game we’ve made on behalf of and in support of other game developers who were not Balloon Co. [gaming division]! We can understand people not understanding our games, and thus not liking them, since we ourselves have a wide variety of tastes and disagreements amongst ourselves. That’s ok. However, to hear that we should be disqualified felt worse than accidentally spilling boiling walrus blubber on our hands while cooking! (And some of us have first and a half hand knowledge of that!)

So, we came up with a brilliant plan:

Step 1: Find and play the game made by the person who HURT OUR FEELINGS! Step 2: Use our analysis of the game to savagely mock the game and take down The Mighty Palm. Step 3: Feel super mighty fine.

There was just one impossible to predict problem with our plan: THE GAME WAS MADE TOO GOOD TO MOCK!

Your game has great music, color palette, expansive world to explore, secrets that were fun to uncover and so much more! It had a strong focus on puzzle solving with a secondary focus on puzzle combat that reminded of a Japanese game many of us played via a Chinese bootleg copy: Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru!

One of our favorite puzzles, while not difficult, was the one where you used the IN DUNGEON WARP AS PART OF THE PUZZLE! That was really creative and smart, and we haven’t seen many games utilize that mechanic in that sm-eative-art manner!

After helping those people in the game, we felt really good inside. While we didn’t take down the creator of this game, this game DID still technically achieve Step 3 of our plan without needing step 1-2, so we consider that a speedrun strat! Thanks for making something that made us feel good after we were feeling down! The memory of this game will make latrine duty slightly more bearable! Great job on a greatastic game!

The Protest Vote comments · Replied to Talonos2 in The Protest Vote comments