Soar like an eagle (an unconscious eagle lashed to a helium balloon) as you try to send your friends spiralling to the ground in Balloonbound.
Perhaps the best way to describe Balloonbound, from Awkward Silence Games, is how they did it on their website: ‘Balloonbound is a fighting game about a bunch of dudes floating around in their undies throwing paper airplanes’. This description does, however, leave out the guns, bombs and more, which are flying around waiting for you to grab and use.
I played a dozen-or-so rounds while at Game Anglia late last year, quickly finding that I am in fact very bad at games where you are held aloft by a balloon and also quite bad at throwing paper airplanes with any real meaning or purpose. All of that said, it was a very fun experience, with the rounds feeling perfectly paced and the general scale and distribution of the pickups well balanced.
In an ocean of party games it is definitely hard to create a game that sticks out from the rest. In its current state, Balloonbound had enough to hold a crowd for the entire event, and considering the other weapons planned, as listed on the developer’s Trello board, it does feel like the game can achieve that. The chaos of more weapons, dynamic weather and a refined kicking system gives it much more allure.
Balloonbound is currently in development for PC and launching later this year, you can read more about the game on its Itch page.
