[typing]
Back in 2011, I reviewed the MS-DOS game "Balloon Challenge,"
a competitive puzzle game from 1993 by Soleau Software.
And in that review, I said:
"I'd love to see this remade for the Android or iOS platform
because this kind of quick and addicting gameplay is ideal for mobile gaming."
Well, lo and behold, Steve Wood, aka "therealeasterbunny,"
thought the same thing.
And since he's a developer with the chops to actually pull this off,
and not just some slacker spewing words on YouTube,
he got to work on developing this port of "Balloon Challenge" to Android.
With direct approval from its original developer, Mr. William Soleau,
you can now download and play "Balloon Challenge" right from the Google Play Store.
And it's absolutely free.
That's right. No microtransactions or ads or any of that nonsense.
Just straight up free. Ah, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaking of beautiful, these menus sure aren't.
[chuckling] But who cares?
It's Balloon Freaking Challenge and it's totally awesome.
Not only that, but you get a bunch of new options to choose from.
You can change the color of your balloon,
play against the computer AI or against another person,
change the time of day, which is really just the background,
adjust the difficulty,
and even keep track of your win-loss stats and high scores.
Aw, dude. How cool is this?
It may not seem like much to some of you, but man,
seeing an obscure Shareware game I played tirelessly on my old Packard Bell as a kid updated like this–
Oh, it's like I'm living in a bizarro universe
where even the most common Beanie Babies are still collectible.
[high-pitched voice] I resent that, sir!
In case you missed my original review, or
just want to hear me prattle on about it,
the concept of "Balloon Challenge" is delightfully simple.
You've got 25 hot-air balloons in a row along the bottom of the screen
and the same goes for your opponent.
Whoever goes first is randomly selected
but after that, players alternate selecting a balloon to set loose.
The higher your balloon goes, the more points you score,
and whoever has the most points by the time all balloons have departed wins.
Along the way, your balloons will run into arrows that move your balloon left or right,
tornadoes that teleport you to another location – for better or worse,
and airplanes that will deflate you and disqualify that balloon.
There are also little ten-point bonuses that can be collected
if your balloon passes through them,
and the ability to ground your opponent's balloons
if you set yours loose directly over theirs.
So, there's a layer of strategy here that's not immediately apparent.
And dude! This is just as much fun today as it was back then.
It's a game as timeless as chess, or Probe.
What, you haven't played Probe?
Maybe my childhood was weird.
Anyway, these balloons are deceptively challenging,
hence the name,
and I am just psyched this can be played
on a mobile device without the need for emulation.
I love that it uses the same graphics and sound effects as the original.
But I also enjoy the slight changes that optimizes it for touch devices,
like the green guideline that makes sure you don't accidentally select the wrong balloon with your fingertip.
I also dig the new difficulty options because
this is one of those that you may as well call it quits after a single move
that isn't 100% optimal because, uh,
the AI knows all.
But playing this against another person
is the best experience for a multitude of reasons.
So having the tabletop mode where you can sit your phone or tablet between you
and play head-to-head with the screen rotating automatically is great!
In fact, I only have one complaint about this port,
and that is that pressing your device's back button,
or letting the screen time out, means that the game just shuts down.
The app pause and resume feature is supposed to be implemented eventually,
but until then it's easy to forget and just accidentally quit the whole game.
Oh, well, just keep that in mind and have fun with it!
Because it's free, and it's challenging, and it's balloons.
Balloons are awesome.
Especially when they help you score, and these do, so I approve.
[bluesy rock riff]
And if you enjoyed hearing me say the word "balloon" too much,
then maybe you'd like to see my original "Balloon Challenge" video.
Goes into more detail about the game and its predecessors and whatnot.
And you can also check out any of my other stuff.
I've got some things linked to here...
more videos and Twitter and Facebook. Patreon, if you wanna do all that.
And, uh, subscribing is appreciated if you'd like to see more in the future.
More videos coming every Monday and Friday.
And as always, thank you very much for ballooning.
Much like I do after eating too much rice.
Wow, I don't know where I was going with this. Thanks for watching!