Balloon Full of Love Review (PC)

There’s something awfully poetic about a cherry apple red hot air balloon coursing through a noire-drizzled cityscape with the embers of love fanning its ascent. It doesn’t need to say anything to convey its story, nor does it need to flesh out the details with monikers or memories, elusive keepsakes or irritatingly vague monologues. In Balloon Full of Love, the message is etched in the wind, in the fleeting passage of time and the small but significant sheets of music that flow into the charcoal clouds and suburban neighborhoods. It doesn’t need to explain anything; love is transparent, and it’s as crimson as the balloon that lifts your spirit.

Unlike your typical romance visual novel, Balloon Full of Love opts for the open love letter—a representation that you don’t need to be fluid in the language of love to understand, or even a fledgling romantic at heart to relate to, for that matter. Instead, it chooses to paint a familiar image in a poetic way—a tale in which a soul relentlessly pursues love, loss, and redemption in a manner that makes you feel every gust of wind, every passing note, and every fleeting emotion that sways with the midsummer breeze. A red balloon; a sky of music sheets; and a quest that touches upon a real and somewhat wholesome concept that resonates with us on a personal level. It doesn’t need to do much more than that to convey its message. It’s pure, and it’s unsaturated, just like the cascading effects of a soul succumbing to the power of hope and desire.

Behind all of these familiar palpitations is a simple yet beautifully heartfelt voyage that reaches out to you to tell a short but deeply personal tale. Mechanic-wise, it doesn’t go out of its way to reinvent the wheel or latch onto anything particularly extraordinary. Musically, however, it does all in its power to deliver a powerful crescendo that leaves its passengers with more than a fuzzy feeling in their heart. It’s simple, true, but if there is one thing that Balloon Full of Love has in its possession, it’s heart. And heart, really, is all that this faithful indie needs to breathe life into its core.

Fleeting Romance

Balloon Full of Love presents you with a charcoal metropolis, a beaming red balloon, and a sky that goes beyond the farthest silver cloud with music sheets and small but seemingly heartfelt mementos, wisps of joy and cascading emotions of passion and romantic flare. In this world, you take to the skies as a young inventor who, like so many others, embarks on a noble quest to brave the winds and wrap a bandage on the wayward heart. With a whirlwind choir and a 1930s “Art Deco” aesthetic, it invites you to get behind the lit flames of a hot air balloon and chase music—the beating heart of a lover’s affair that not only acts as the game’s primary instrument, but the stepping stones that usher the plot towards its grand crescendo.

At the heart of all of this is a short, albeit touching journey that, although still without the weight of a mechanically complex system, has a lot of tender moments and relatable snippets that correlate with the familiar feeling of being in love. It doesn’t do a lot to elevate the foundations of an aviation-centric flight collect-a-thon, though it does find various ways to keep you pursuing that next all-important sheet of music to progress the expedition. Maybe it’s the joy that ties in with the act of gracefully flowing through the skies in an attempt to harmonize with love, or maybe it’s the charming OST from Robert Bünsow that alters the mood and keeps you pushing forward.

I can’t bring myself to say that Balloon Full of Love is teeming with original features and pivotal elements, because frankly, it still fails to capture a concept that hasn’t already been recycled dozens of times over. For what it’s worth, though, I will say that it is likely to appeal to a certain demographic—the fans of short buy meaningful arcade games that opt for musical storytelling over script-heavy theatrics. It isn’t quite on the same page as Journey, but it makes a good attempt at falling beneath into the same binder.

To Catch a Heart

The gameplay itself hovers between a flight-based obstacle course and your typical collect-a-thon, with the primary aim of the game being to locate a source of fuel to keep your fires alight, and finding sheets of music to progress the story to its next beat. It isn’t a flawless experience I’ll admit, and it doesn’t always make the art of aviation come across as a graceful sight. But, for where it lacks in technical detail, it often makes up in its small pockets of heartfelt pride and mementos, fitting soundtracks and striking noir-drizzled images.

Verdict

Balloon Full of Love takes flight as a charmingly apt love letter to romance and the fleeting moments that shape our flourishing relationships with a simple yet elegant flight-centric arcade endeavor that offers just as much heart as it does powerful snippets of sky-high wonder and woe. Granted, it doesn’t do much to bring you closer to an advanced spectrum of mechanics, and it doesn’t do a lot to redefine its chosen genre, either. However, behind all of its minor shortcomings is a genuinely enjoyable cloud-hopping romance that has a lot of soul and vigor to offer its target clientele.

While Balloon Full of Love isn’t a perfect game by any stretch, it does at least manage to one-up the likes of Pigeon Simulator with its fairly straightforward flight mechanics and arcade-centric gameplay style. Is it the best indie jewel you’ll wrap your hands around this year? Probably not, no. Is it a game that’ll leave you feeling a little warm and fuzzy on the inside? Yes. Do you think that’s enough to keep you emotionally invested for the long haul? The jury’s out on that one.