Breezy Balloons Guide – How to Steer a Hot-Air Balloon, Hit Bullseyes and Get 3 Stars

Breezy Balloons! is a free hot-air balloon game for your browser and phone. You can’t steer left or right: you only go up or down, and every altitude has its own wind. This guide explains how that works, how to hit targets and land softly, and how to get 3 stars on all 12 flights.

The two controls

• Burner (hold Space, W, the up arrow or the big flame button): heats the envelope. The balloon doesn’t jump up at once. Heat builds, then the lift follows, just like a real balloon.
• Let go and the envelope slowly cools, so the balloon starts to sink after a few seconds. Short bursts of the burner every few seconds keep you level.
• Vent (S, the down arrow or the blue button): dumps heat for a quicker descent.

Plan ahead. If you want to be 40 m higher in ten seconds, start burning now. If you are climbing too fast, stop early and let the climb fade out. If the timing feels hard, turn on Altitude hold assist in the settings: the balloon then keeps its height while you don’t press anything.

Steering with wind layers

Each flight has two to four wind layers stacked on top of each other, and each one blows in its own direction at its own speed. The wind ladder on the left of the screen shows them from the ground up:

• the arrow in each band shows where that layer will carry you, seen from the camera;
• a green tick means that layer is heading toward your next objective;
• the balloon icon shows your height, and a ring or flag icon shows how high the next objective is.

So the basic move is: climb or sink into the green layer, ride it, then switch layers again when the next objective is somewhere else. Close to a layer boundary the two winds blend, which is handy for small corrections. The coloured wind streaks drifting past you use the same colours as the ladder.

The objective chip at the top tells you the distance to the next ring, flag, target or landing field and how many metres you need to climb (▲) or drop (▼).

Sky rings, flags and coins

• Sky rings count when the balloon passes through them (the middle of the envelope has to be close to the ring’s centre). A faint beam under every ring helps you judge its height.
• Flags sit on top of poles. Fly low so the basket brushes past the flag, within a few metres of the top.
• Coins float along the routes. They add to your score and pay out in the Hangar.

Missed a ring? Look at the ladder: if no layer blows back toward it, carry on and grab the rest. Most first stars ask for all rings, so it can pay to retry.

Marker drops and bullseyes

Targets are big fabric crosses with four scoring rings: 100 points inside 5 m (a bullseye), 60 inside 12 m, 30 inside 22 m and 10 inside 35 m. Each target keeps only your best marker, so a second, better drop improves the score.

When you are near a target, a crosshair ring on the ground shows where a marker dropped right now would land. It turns green when the landing spot is inside the 12 m ring. Tips:

• Drop low. A marker falls at about 14 m/s and is pushed by the wind on the way down, so from 30 m the prediction is very precise; from 200 m it drifts a lot.
• Line up early. Pick the layer that carries you straight over the cross, then descend to about 30 m before you get there.
• Press DROP (or E) when the ring sits on the centre of the X.

Landing

A flight ends when the basket rests on the ground with the burner off. To land in the landing field, start descending early (it takes time to lose height) and pick the layer that drifts you into the circle. Touch down slower than about 3 m/s: faster than that and the basket bumps back up, which fails “land without a bump”. Landing in a river or the sea is a splashdown and counts as a failed landing. The frozen lake in the Night Glow region is solid ice, so landing on it is fine.

Propane, thermals and storms

• Some flights have a propane limit (Village Fête, Canyon Drop and Grand Night Glow). Burn in short bursts, avoid big climbs you don’t need and use the thermals.
• Thermals are shimmering columns of warm air. Inside one the balloon rises without the burner.
• Storm clouds push you down and lightning zaps away some heat. Fly around them, not through.
• The air gets thin near the ceiling (about 300 m), so you can’t climb forever.
• Rock chimneys in the canyon bump the balloon away and cost a bit of heat; brushing treetops slows you down.

The 12 flights

1. Clover Valley: First Puff (one wind: just rise and sink through the rings), Which Way, Wind? (low air east, high air north: zig-zag between them), Bullseye Fair (your first marker drops).
2. Lavender Coast: Lavender Lanes (low flying for flags), Sea Breeze Switch (mid air blows toward the sea, the low sea breeze brings you back; a thermal on the way), Village Fête (three targets on one tank).
3. Fairy Chimney Canyon: Sunrise Rally (rings among the rock chimneys), Chimney Weave (low flags between the chimneys), Canyon Drop (four layers, two targets, short tank).
4. Snowpeak Night Glow: Lantern Lights, Stormy Ridge (two storm clouds and a flag on the frozen lake), Grand Night Glow (the finale with everything).

Balloons and passengers

Coins buy new envelopes in the Hangar. They differ in lift (how hard the burner pushes), thrift (propane use) and agility (how quickly the balloon picks up a new wind layer). The Meadow Quilt is the cheap thrifty pick; the Bumble Bee and Golden Glow are the best all-rounders. Passengers (a corgi, Grandma Rosa, a goat, a cat captain and a penguin) are just for fun and comment on everything that happens.

Free Flight and the Course Maker

Free Flight gives you endless rings, targets and coin trails on random winds with no propane limit. Land whenever you like to bank your score. In the Course Maker you set up to four wind layers, place rings, targets, flags, coins, storms, thermals, a landing field and the launch spot on a map, then test-fly, edit, copy, delete or share your course as a code that starts with BRZ1..