Luft Balloons – Review

 
Buy a bag of balloons with the money you’ve got.
Luft Balloons‘, appropriately high-concept, premise can be summed up as follows: Get a set number of different coloured balloons from A to B. A being the crates on the floor and B being the sky-lights in the ceiling.

Sound mind-numbingly simple? That’s what I thought…
…until I tried the first level. Rather than control the balloons directly you must manipulate the air currents in the environment using a pair of electric fans, thus guiding their journey through the air, whilst attempting to avoid the beds of nails and other booby traps some irresponsible dope has inexplicably super-glued to the ceilings and walls.
Doesn’t sound so easy now does it?
Fans are controlled by sliding your finger up and down the screen, while you can also adjust their velocity by tapping on the pressure gauges. And although you’ll most likely clear the first few stages by twiddling with the fans and hoping for the best, later levels require a lot more strategy. 
As the game continues things quickly get complex, with time-limits decreasing, quotas going up, and the saboteur returning to fire paper planes, arrows and other projectiles at your helium filled orbs.
 
And these levels are where Luft Balloons truly comes into its own, delivering some fast-paced, against-the-clock fun.
Combos can be scored by getting the correct sequence of colors to safety, earning you extra points, and much to the delight of the crowd of helium balloon enthusiasts gathered somewhere off-screen.
The game looks amazing in motion, balloons float and drift realistically, while the pastel coloured back-drops are adequately easy on the eye. But with only 15 levels of balloon manoeuvring fun on offer, the game is, perhaps, a little light on content.
iFanzine Verdict: A light-hearted physics puzzler with great graphics and highly addictive gameplay.
Score: 6 out of 10