The Night Balloonists.

The Night Balloonists is a two to four player versus game where balloons battle for pollen above a sea of ink. Each game lasts exactly three minutes (unless it goes into "sudden death") at which point whoever currently has the most pollen wins.

It's a one button game made for the GAMMA4 competition. That means all the controls are done with a single button, no d-pad or arrow keys. Because GAMMA is a big social event it was originally designed to be played in a bar like setting.

You can download The Night Balloonists and check out our other games here: http://www.spookysquid.com/nightballoonists/

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• four player game
• party game
• indie games
• GAMMA4
• one button game
• the night balloonists
• spooky squid games
• steampunk
• art nouveau
• pollen.

[spookysquidgames]

Thanks. Great to hear you could get it running in Ubuntu as well. I'll add that info to the readme if/when we do an update.

[spookysquidgames]

Thanks! We did a fair bit of testing to get the scheme right. There was an earlier setup that let you control spitting and boosting separately but was much harder to do basic movement and switch from one air current to another.

[Zereox]

I just tried it and it's really great. Nice use of Holding, Double press and normal press. I also want to confirm that this games runs on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) running on Wine 1.1.39.

Great Job!

[Tamakun23]

Amazing work! If I didn't know that this was a one-button game, I would've guessed the control pad was in play, but knowing that all that control comes from a simple one-button scheme is incredible!

[spookysquidgames]

Whups thought the video was still set to private while I added annotations. Oh well!

Thanks! We tried to balance the game to feel similar to games like Mario Kart, lots of back and forth where you're not sure who will win. But still having a skill component so it doesn't become too shallow and button mashy.

The game will be online later tonight, definitely recommend you check it out with some friends when you have a chance!

[Zereox]

Really cool game concept. I really like the Pollen's location a bit like Ballons in Mario Kart Battle levels. Nice work, and I hope you best. Long Live SSG.