Balloon Journey Japan
A gentle hot air balloon flight simulator The real Japan
Catch a wind at dawn.
Wake up somewhere you have never been.
Japan from a wicker basket at 800 metres — snow ridges, cloud seas, river valleys and town lights, all of it at full size, all of it yours to drift across. Pick your height, put the phone in your pocket, and let the sky take you somewhere.
Two buttons, one sky, and a country that keeps going.
Anyone can fly this.
Burn to rise, vent to sink. Hold a button, let go, and the balloon stays where you left it. A child works it out in ten seconds — and then spends a year learning how to land on the mountain they picked.
It flies while you sleep.
Close the app and your balloon keeps drifting. Open it over breakfast and the night plays back: the track across the map, the ridges you crossed at 3 a.m., and the two or three photographs it took without you.
An hour is an hour.
The real clock, the real calendar, and a balloon's real 20–40 km/h. Tokyo to Osaka takes a day or two of your life to cross. This is a game you visit — it will never nag you for a streak.
A country, not a level.
Everything on the horizon is already open to you. It is one unbroken Japan at full size — the same ridges, the same river valleys, the same coastline you would fly over tomorrow. No stage select, nothing to unlock: point at anything out there and go. Drift north for a week and you are simply a week further north.
And the patchwork under you is the real one: paddies and orchards, the town that grew where two valleys meet, the road that hugs the river because the valley only has room for one.
Altitude is your steering wheel — and it is enough.
The wind at 300 m and the wind at 2,000 m almost never agree with each other. Finding the layer that is heading your way is the entire craft of ballooning, and it is the entire craft here. Climb into it, ride it, drop out of it when it turns.
Better still, the sky keeps its promises. The forecast in your hand comes from the same maths the world is flown with, so it is not a guess with a percentage on it. Read it right at dawn and you will be over the mountain you chose.
Some mornings, the whole sky turns up.
Other people's balloons are really up there, riding the same wind you are. Catch the same layer as a stranger and you will travel together all afternoon without either of you planning it.
Then the calendar turns and everyone converges — north with the cherry blossom in spring, over the fireworks in summer, and onto the autumn riverbeds where a hundred balloons come up at first light. You can wave, send a greeting, hand over a gift, flash your burner after dark. There is no text box anywhere, which is exactly why it stays this calm.
Open it, and find out where you went.
The best moment in this game happens before you touch anything. The app opens and the night plays back — the line you drew across the map, the towns and ridges that passed under you while you slept, and the views worth keeping.
What you collect is a record, not a stat line. Prefectures crossed, named peaks passed within sight, the far corners of where you have been. None of it makes the balloon faster. It makes the map yours.
The same place, at every hour it has.
Time of day, season and weather come from the real calendar and a physical model of the sky, so the view is never twice the same. Dawn mist, a noon full of cumulus, a cloud sea catching the last of the sun, the Milky Way over a sleeping town — and rain, which is there to be flown through, not survived.
One of these is going to be yours.
Choose the shape of your envelope, the colours it wears, the trim on the basket and the lights that come on after dark. Everything you can ever buy in this game is a look — never a wind, never a shortcut, never a day of your time back.
Places worth waiting for a wind.
A cloud sea that parts around Fuji. A gorge with 1,500 m walls where the wind inside runs a different way from the wind above. A riverbed in Saga that fills with balloons every autumn. Reaching one is the good part.
FUJI Mount Fuji The one mountain everyone can name — and a cloud sea that hides everything else. 
KUROBE Kurobe Gorge A gorge so narrow the wind inside it runs a different way from the wind above. 
SAGA Saga and the Balloon Fiesta Every autumn, a hundred balloons off one riverbed at first light. Screenshots are from a build in progress and are not necessarily taken at the place described.
Terrain is built from elevation data published by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI).
Why a balloon has no steering wheel.
Everything this game asks of you is true of a real hot air balloon. A short, plain set of pages on how they actually fly — worth reading even if you never play.
Coming to iOS and Android.
Balloon Journey Japan is in the workshop right now, and the mailing list hears everything first: one email the day the beta opens, one the day it goes live.
- iOSAt launch
- AndroidAt launch
- SteamPlanned
- Nintendo SwitchPlanned
Be on the first flight.
Balloon Journey Japan is coming to iOS and Android. Leave your address and you will hear it here first: one email the day the beta opens, one the day the game goes live.