Nice entry! The little animation and story at the beginning were great, and the game played smoothly. The audio was nice without being disruptive, and the narration was a nice touch. It did feel pretty difficult to avoid some of the obstacles at times, especially when there were several tacks flying in from the sides (it's hard to line up the balloon vertically since you can't knock it downward or horizontally).

Some kind of music would have added to the atmosphere.

@jeremy-ryan Thanks for your feedback :smile: Balancing is definitely one of the more difficult parts of game dev, so I'll agree that sometimes the game can be aggressive. And I'm not a musician (or an artist for that matter) so making sure the gameplay was fun was my top priority. Thanks again, I hope you enjoyed!

The game runs wonderfully smooth! The animation at the beginning was great and amusing, which made learning the game easy and fun.
Overall great job!! :D x

Lord, the audio needs some work. Some things were so loud. The intro animation stuff was super impressive for a compo game, but the voice was obnoxious at some parts. The gameplay itself was pretty cool and the art looked good. Overall, very impressive.

Your voice acting is great. Please put it in all future projects! "A game where you keep a balloon in the air" was one of my brainstormed ideas for this jam initially but you really did a great job with it. Controls were fair and responsive, creative obstacles slowly made their way into the scene, and the game really gets more hectic and interesting as the game goes on. Only feedback is it often felt unfair to have to mouse cursor over to choose something to buy and distracted from gameplay. Maybe map the shop items to numbers on the keyboard? Great work

That was a fun game! Loved the tutorial animation and voice over, was implemented very well! I agree that some of the obstacles were very difficult to avoid at times. Definitely enjoyed this entry though! Good work

@ponypen Thanks, yeah I've been criticized for lack of tutorial in the past so I made it a priority to get it in this one!
@demogorgon Audio is definitely not my strongest category, but thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated!
@adam-konig :smile: I'm glad you like my voice acting! I had several ideas too and I wasn't sure about this one but I'm very happy how it turned out! Those controls are a good idea, and I will keep it in mind. Thanks for your feedback!
@maggardjosh Thanks for your feedback, you have to lose eventually though right? I will continue to work on balancing though, it shouldn't feel unfair. Thanks!

"It's the only one we've got!" (5 minute later) Oh my gosh, there's a lot of balloons! I loved that intro, though - and the sound effects were excellent too. I like the idea for the game - it was pretty fun, although I think a higher frequency of obstacles would be appreciated. I also found it a bit easy - perhaps instead of having more balloons that are expendable, having more that are not would be a nice addition; it seemed pretty easy to keep my balloon out of harm's way, but I bet it would get hectic (in a fun way) if I had to keep two or three or four alive.

I'm got way too invested in those ballons. :smile:

Thanks for sharing a fun little game.

Very cool and fun game! Really love your voice acting in tutorial and balloon physics. The game itself is fun, challenging and has mechanics to keep you interested. Very solid entry!

THIS GAME HAS NO BUSINESS BEING AS ENJOYABLE AS IT WAS.

The concept of "Don't let the balloon touch the ground" has officially been perfected here. The graphics are exactly what they need to be, the upgrades and dangers make PERFECT sense, and the reasoning for having that many balloons is somehow AIRTIGHT... Whatever this game was going for, it nailed it.

Even Billy could play this game.
Minus 2 points for the lack of cake. Happy Birthday, Billy.

I liked your game, Well done on submitting it. It was fun to play, and had good intro Tut for everything and the humor was good.
As a bit of feedback, i would say part of the time i played, i could not tell what caused me to lose. I may have been missing some indicators or life count but it did not seem clear enough for me to know how to Not do that again or when i was running the risk of losing.

@meelo Thanks! Hmm interesting mixed reviews finding it easy & hard but wow that is a great idea to have more red balloons, will be adding that in the future.

@rixium Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed!

@greebs Thanks so much for your feedback! :smile: I deserve that deduction, cake should've been there :disappointed: but fun fact, my birthday was on Saturday, my name's not Billy, but I'll accept your birthday wish!

Anonymous - The tutorial says that the red balloon is the only balloon you need to stay alive, although I suppose that could've been more clear, thanks for your feedback.

Fun little game! GREAT tutorial. Very clear, and had fun voice acting. I wish the pixel art was a little more visually interesting. It was also hard to tell when certain events were going to happen. Nice work!

@picross Thanks for your feedback, not an artist, so I tried my best, I will be improving the tutorial in the future!

This is a fantastic little game. I had so much fun with it. :grinning:
The tutorial is fantastic, the sounds (especially voice-over) are great, and the gameplay feels smooth and fun. A couple of the sounds felt a little bit out of place, and it might have been nice to have some background music - even just white noise. Maybe some chatter in the background? Allegedly Billy has friends (for now), so I feel like it would make sense. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
But yeah, overall an awesome experience, I have very few criticisms. Great work!

great little game with lovely art and good audio ! Good job with the tutorial

Very cool and fun game! Love your voice acting and balloon physics. A truly solid entry

Great entry, the voice acting was just in touch, hope to see a polished version of this someday. I love these kinds of game where you get told what to do in a funny way

Cool game! Thanks for it! Challenging, like it! Super cool Tutorial and love the idea to read it! Silly music in the back would be a dream.

Cool entry, I liked the voice acting and the story at the beginning which also showed tutorial. Would be great to have some music.

Best intro :D Nice voice acting :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZRUKw9B7uc

@molpe Wow! Thanks so much for playing and making a video!

The game is very fun! I really like the concept and how it’s related to the jam’s theme to be honest :smile: Plus I love the humor and the voice acting, it’s very funny :smile: Nice job!
If I had to say something, that would be that the game would have deserved some music to enhance the experience :slight_smile: But otherwise, it works great to me!

Very nostalgic, I remember trying to keep the balloon up at my own party when I was younger. Unfortunately I died to what i think is a glitch? The red balloon was offscreen, and I had no way to move it out of the way of a dart.

@dps2004 The darts were added to discourage the player from pushing the balloon off-screen all the time, but I can see how that might seem unfair. I'll definitely be changing that in the future. Thanks for playing!

Cool game. The narrated tutorial is awesome - much easier than reading a bunch of text tbh :p It's pretty fun, especially with the upgrades to keep things going. I scored 107 points after a couple tries :balloon:

Nice little game! The little story and tutorial at the beginning were great. I liked that you could by stuff with your earned points, it made the game more interesting.

lol dude I just found this game. we had very similar ideas! I'm going to play it even though rating was over cause I want to see your spin on the keep up the balloon idea