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Ladies and Gentleman, we are officially in the Tap-To-Navigate era! Spearheaded by successful games like Flappy Bird, imitation games have popped up almost overnight, beating to death an original concept. Still, some developers manage to break through the mold by offering a unique spin on a tried and true idea. Fly Balloon, Fly! does exactly this by making you work just a little bit harder.

Tap To Hold

The premise behind Fly Balloon, Fly! is to keep your balloon steady, navigating through a bunch of swords placed above and beneath you. Tapping a sword from any angle causes your balloon to pop, making you die instantly and forces you to start over. Control over your character is not as simple as tapping to navigate. Tapping on the screen drags the balloon toward to surface, while releasing the screen allows the character to float higher and higher. This makes control and navigation quite difficult. Take the time to familiarize yourself with how to navigate, otherwise you will get nowhere fast!

After a few tries, we managed to do relatively well, but control was still quite a task. Part of this is we assume is that anyone who plays this game will have had experience with the other tap-to-navigate offerings. Playing this requires a different way of thinking, so all of the confusion will emanate from that. Feeling almost as if we were controlling a real floating device, we were able to get to a high score of 12. Not bad for a fourth try!

Extras and Verdict

Fly Balloon, Fly gives you two background scenes, day and night, which has no effect on game play. The graphics and music are seemingly retro with a mid-1990s feel. As the game is free, ads are present and to be expected, but are never distracting. We would like to see the developer add some method to share scores through social media channels, which is standard flair in mobile gaming these days. Also, perhaps difficulty levels and another means of getting points would make the game even more interesting than it already is. Still, the game is a good effort and would make a nice addition to your tap-to-navigate arsenal of mobile games.

GMA