Balloonair
by NO11
A hot air balloon game for Minetest.
This game was created during 21 days for the 2021 Minetest GAME JAM. Everything (sounds, textures, models, code) was created by NO11 in these 21 days and it is under the GPL 3.0 license.
The goal of the game is to get the highest score. The score consists of the position of your balloon and the coins you collected.
Try not to sink down!
You can play this game on a server with other players. You can see the scores of all players who have been on the server by running /scores.
Gameplay
Control a balloon and fly as far towards the sun as you can.
There are 3 items which you can collect:
- Gas bottle: drive forward faster
- Sandbag: you can activate a total of 4, the balloon rises because it is losing weight
- Shield: protects you from hills or birds, collect shield coins (green coins) to get it
Left click with the item to activate the boost. After 10 seconds the effect is removed. Do not try to hit birds, you will kill them and you will sink! If you hit the ground you lose. Be careful: you only come up with sand and otherwise the balloon will keep sinking. Collect coins to get more points! Do not worry if everything you see is black in the beginning! Then you spawned in a mountain, but as long as you are in it, you are immortal!
While trying not to sink, enjoy the beautiful randomly generated landscape!
Controls
Where you move the mouse doesn't affect where you fly, you always fly in the direction of the sun and you can only steer right, left, up and down!
- Down: lower the balloon
- Left: move the balloon to the left
- Right: move the balloon to the rigth
- Jump: start game
- Aux1: abort game
- Dig: use the selected item
- Escape: pause game
At the moment there are no global variables/functions, it is standalone. If it gets enough positive feedback, maybe I'll create a modding API.
The game supports the current stable Minetest version 5.4.1, but with the 5.5-dev you have an even better gaming experience!
Warning: Don't be frustrated if you spawn in a bad world and you crash into a mountain. Either use the shield you get at the beginning or you start a new world. Random worlds are nice to look at and a feature of this game, I don't want to do permanent levels! When the Game Jam is over, many other things can be added, such as a decelerator, so that you don't end up in areas of the map that Minetest has not even loaded.
Have fun with my game and enjoy your flight, NO11!
A lot good, good coloring and theming, looking forward to smoother gameplay in the future
It's a fun mechanic, being a balloon! And the artstyle is on point, and the game goal is good: high score, fly a balloon. Well done there.
But: that doesn't stop the game from being frustrating.
The coins and powerups are randomly placed, which is good, but makes comparing high scores useless in many respects.
I think it could be a great game with post-jam modifications if:
The mapgen is fixed up, and is the same between worlds, or at least repeatable
level(s) are designed to be pre-loaded so that I don't have to try flying over non-existent land (And this is not a bad computer, by any means)
The score formspec is made nicer, and instructions are given at startup
P.S. The birds are the best part:)
Reviews from Emojiminetest: Enjoyable Flight
Pros
Cons
Overall
Thanks NO11, this game give me a rest in the Game Jam!
Truly a masterpiece especially concerning designing!
First of all I really liked the idea of the flying balloon, I don't know any other games including a hot air balloon, quite creative in my opinion!
It's also real fun playing it, especially when you get used to the control which was a little bit hard in the beginning to be honest. It worked for me very well, I didn't find any relevant major bugs although the map generates not fast enough (may be a minetest issue).
The whole setting is really convincing, asthetic choice of colors, flying gas bottles are of course unrealistic but isn't it a game? It's also kind of calming and because of the aesthetics it's not overstimulating at all (like many other games I know).
It's unique and it's definitely worth a try!
323/450: BalloonAir
GAME DESCRIPTION: BalloonAir is a forwards-scrolling game where your goals are to collect coins and dodge paper airplanes.
RATINGS:
Visual Appeal: 16/20
Sound/Audio Design: 6/20
Completeness: 20/30
License: 30/30
Originality: 0/50
Gameplay: 15/50
Performance: 40/50
User Friendly/Intuitive: 70/100
Codebase: 130/150
FINAL SCORE: 329/450
FINAL THOUGHTS: It's alright for a game, fun to play for a few minutes but I see not much value in playing it for longer than that. Maybe making it competitive with an online leaderboard or server would make things more interesting. Let me know if you do!
NOTE: Recommended/not recommended is based on if the score is an 84% or higher.
Nice graphics, gameplay could use some work
I really like the graphics, it's beautiful! Kudos for making it all yourself. I found the gameplay quite painful, you could use some tooltips/HUD text for the different items
from judge review, 8.5/10
Classic minigame with nice colors
The game is playable and the landscape looks nice.
Be careful to not load your world in creative mods or it wont work (maybe it was the problem of carlos_rupp)
Nice but short game
I like this game really. But today i have more game jam games to test too. The control like in inventory writen work other but i learned it after a while. It's hard and one tiime i died because a flying tree.
If i would have 6% of Rating: * 0.5/1 for the Idea --This Idea can get everybody but have not. * 1.5/2 for the textures --I think the coins, baloon and items was textured by you but at the rest idk * 2/3 for the play.--It's Funny to play. I haven't get a bad spawn but if you get it's maybe not funny. You can the generate-high of mountains customize. Also you should describe in inventory what you can do with the items. * 4/6 in total -- Funny short game, which i can recommend when you are bored. This game was rated good for the Game Jam
Good models, but gets boring after some time
I really appreciate the effort you put into this, but I think the gameplay gets boring after playing for a few minutes and there's not much to do.
Intresting concept and good graphics
Graphics are very nice, but the baloon sometimes seems bugging (going inside entire mountains without actually crashing).
Hope this will get fixed!
Somewhat Confusing Launcher Game
I can’t seem to figure out how to play this game well. I can tell you’re supposed to move to get the power ups and avoid the birds (coins don’t seem very helpful as they’re only 10 points), but it seems I can’t actually move fast enough to get anything intentionally. I also am not sure I totally understand what the powerups actually do. The game is fun anyway.
One of my favorite Game Jam submissions!
This game was played and rated in the Minetest GAME JAM LIVE (ep5): https://rumble.com/vrmbsg-minetest-game-jam-live-ep5.html Note: rating system was changed a bit from ep1
OVERVIEW
OVERALL: 23/30 (Great)
CONCLUSION
I loved this game! Great job NO11. I think the tutorial needs to explain the items, and maybe add some background music? The game was a little glitchy, but for me didn't take the fun out of it really. Good job!
-StarNinjas
Don't work for me
I create the worlds but only enter in the landscape and shows 'Press JUMP to start'. I press jump and the player jump. Press 'i' shows controls but i can't play.
Broken
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
It's literally unplayable for me. It say "Jump to play" but when I do that, nothing happens. I tried that multiple times, but failed. I'm sorry. :-(
Round objects everywhere and too broken
I know I might sound annoying, but if the aesthetic of the game engine revolves around voxels, why not using squared objects whenever it's possible? On the contrary, everything implemented is a custom round model (hot-air balloons, coins), making the game uselessly heavier whilst breaking the aesthetic at the same time.
Graphics aside, the first world didn't work, commands felt clumsy, and I found no way to go back up with the air-balloon. I basically couldn't play properly