Balloon Journey Japan Balloon Journey Japan Every rule Balloon Journey Japan asks you to live with is a rule of real ballooning. There is no steering wheel because a real balloon has none; altitude picks your direction because that is the only thing a real pilot can choose.
These pages explain the real thing, in plain language. They are worth reading whether or not you ever open the game.
Hot air is thinner than cold air, and that is the entire mechanism. The interesting part is how little difference it takes, and how much fabric you need to make it useful.
READ — 4 min → 02One makes the balloon go up. One makes it go down. There is no third control, and the absence is the whole design.
READ — 3 min →A balloon travels at exactly the speed of the air around it, which means it feels no wind and can push against nothing. Direction has to come from choosing which air to be in.
READ — 5 min → 04For most of the day the air near the ground is boiling. Balloons fly in the two short windows when it is not.
READ — 4 min →You cannot choose where a balloon lands, only roughly when. Everything about the landing — the chase crew, the farmer, the bottle — follows from that.
READ — 4 min → 06A hundred balloons off one riverbed in Saga every autumn, a competition sport that is entirely about choosing altitudes, and an aircraft that is legally not an aircraft.
READ — 4 min →One email when the beta opens, one when the game is out.