BALLOON BASH

Inspiration

Balloon Bash was inspired by classic tower defense games and the satisfaction of building a defense that becomes stronger as the pressure rises. The goal was to create a fast portrait experience where placement, upgrades, and adapting to increasingly dangerous balloon waves all matter.

What it does

Balloon Bash is a single-player tower defense and strategy game. Players spend coins to place six different defenses along a winding path, then upgrade and manage them as increasingly powerful balloons attack. Different balloon types bring changes in speed, health, armor, and difficulty, while boss waves test the player's setup. Periodic bonus choices let players shape their strategy throughout the run.

How we built it

Balloon Bash was prompt-built with AI assistance using HTML5 and JavaScript. Development was highly iterative, with frequent testing on an actual mobile device. The prototype was repeatedly adjusted to improve portrait scaling, tower placement, path visibility, enemy spawning, HUD layout, defense sizing, upgrades, progression, effects, and audio. The final build uses local assets and is designed to work completely offline.

Challenges we ran into

Mobile testing exposed several major issues. Early versions had empty screen space, controls covering the path, defenses that were too large, placed towers that did not display correctly, and balloons that failed to appear when waves started. The upgrade interface also took up too much space, and defenses could become crowded together. Each problem led to redesigns focused on keeping the battlefield readable and the controls easy to use on a phone.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of turning the original concept into a complete 15-wave tower defense experience with six distinct defenses, multiple balloon classes, boss waves, tower upgrades, selling, an economy, lives, run bonuses, sound effects, ambience, combat feedback, and complete win, lose, reset, and replay states. The run bonus system became one of our favorite additions because it gives players meaningful choices without distracting from the core tower defense gameplay.

What we learned

The biggest lesson was how important mobile playtesting is. Something that works technically can still feel wrong when played on a phone. Defense size, spacing, UI placement, feedback, and readability had a major impact on how enjoyable the game felt. We also learned that making a smaller number of defenses genuinely different creates more strategy than simply adding more towers that perform similar roles.

What's next for Balloon Bash

The next step is expanding the existing foundation with new maps, balloon behaviors, wave patterns, defenses, bosses, and run bonuses. We would also like to add more strategic interactions between defenses while keeping the game quick to understand and comfortable to play in portrait mode. The goal is to make every run encourage a different defensive strategy while preserving the focused place, defend, earn, and upgrade loop.