How to play
The hot air balloon sets off from a dewy meadow at dawn. A fan fills the envelope with cold air, the burner heats it upright, and when you hold the burner the ground crew lets go of the ropes and up you go. Ahead is a tour of eight flights through the year, each with a landscape and season of its own: spring fields being ploughed with the last snow at the forest edges, an early summer lakeland split by a pine-topped ridge with lupines by the roads, a river valley in bloom with its church village and manor, the granite skerries of the archipelago with midsummer bonfires at sunset, the golden harvest of the plains, a late summer bog with cloudberries and cranes, fells in autumn colours with reindeer, and a winter lakeland finale: frozen lakes with ice fishers and ski tracks, snow-laden spruces and smoking cottages.
A hot air balloon cannot be steered directly. The burner heats the air and the balloon rises; let go and the air cools and the balloon sinks. The vent makes it sink faster. The wind blows a different way at each height, so you change direction by climbing or sinking into another wind. The arrows on the altimeter show where each wind blows, and the green row is the wind that takes you closest to the target. When the balloon rides that wind, the balloon on the altimeter turns green.
At the start of each flight the route guide shows for a moment, on a map and as dots in the sky, a good route to the target: which wind to ride and when to climb or come down. If a landing fails, the route guide stays on for the whole retry. On the game page you can buy the route guide for a whole tour with tokens.
Each flight ends with a landing on the target cross in the middle of a village fair. The closer to the cross and the softer you land, the more points and stars you get. Ribbons are laid round the cross: inside the gold one is three stars, inside the silver one two, and a landing outside the orange ring of flags does not count. Landing in the water, in trees, on a roof, too hard or too far from the target fails, and the flight is flown again. A tour has three tries. On the game page you can buy one more try per tour with tokens.
Take time to enjoy the view on the way: red farmhouses, cows, lakeside saunas, churches, lighthouses and sailing boats. The map in the top right corner shows the country, the balloon, the wind and the target. Fly close to a sight and take a photo, and it goes into your filmstrip and photo album, where you can look at your photos large. When you fly low over houses, people wave. Each landscape has peaceful music of its own, which M or the Music button turns off. But mind the power lines, the church spire, the wind turbines, the flocks of birds and the thundercloud.
Scoring
- Photographing a sight gives 100 points. Each sight can be photographed once per tour.
- When people wave at the balloon, you get 10 points.
- A successful landing gives up to 300 points depending on how close to the cross you come down. A soft landing gives 200 points more and a steady one 80. Each star gives 100 points, and propane saved up to 100.
- A bump costs 40 points, and scraping the treetops 20.
- When the tour is complete, each try left over gives 150 points.
Tips
- Start coming down in time. The balloon drifts while it sinks, but the wind is gentler near the ground.
- A short burst of the burner just before the ground makes the landing soft.
- The smoke at the target shows which way the wind blows near the ground.
