Airtales was never meant to last forever. I even had a line on the roadmap asking when and where the balloon would land. Still, it drifted across Google Earth like a stubborn daydream, a collective ride where strangers became crew.
Fifty days in the sky
I spent about fifty days building it, then another fifty days watching it float. In that time, 8,606 people climbed aboard. At one point 167 players were trying to steer it at the same time. Along the way, 145 photos were snapped, 234 local radios played, and the balloon wandered across thousands of virtual miles.
I had a blast, and also a fair amount of frustration, making it. Game development is nothing like building an app. Apps usually have a problem to solve. Games? Unless boredom is a problem (which I don’t agree), they exist for entertainment. That makes the process slippery. You build something, test if it feels fun, throw it away when it doesn’t, or let it spark a new idea when it does.
What I Learned
- Collective chaos. Everyone steering the same balloon at once was as wild as it sounds. Fun for a while, then pure chaos. The most requested feature was obvious: give people their own balloons.
- Two kinds of players. Some wanted to navigate carefully, to reach specific places. Others were content to just watch. Like social media, there were pilots and lurkers.
- Screenshots became souvenirs. The photos people shared blew me away. Taking a picture of a virtual trip sounds silly, yet some were stunning. In Airtales they felt like postcards from a shared dream. Roblox and Steam also encourage capturing gameplay, but in Airtales it felt more like postcards from a shared dream.
- Google Maps hurdles. Getting Maps to play nice with the game was tough. I liked the final solution until I learned caching map tiles is against Google policy. That one stung.
- Twitch experiments. I hooked Twitch chat into the game so players could teleport the balloon or send messages that got read aloud. I streamed some flights too. But requiring a Twitch account kept most people away. I never wanted to build my own chat system, since moderation is a nightmare, but this wasn’t the answer. Copyright takedowns on radio streams didn’t help either.
- Local radios. These were huge for the vibe, and even part of my distribution strategy. I even reached out to a few stations and some shared it on their socials. That felt like a win.
- Stories in the sky. I tried mixing in book excerpts and AI-generated geo-stories about migration, philosophy, global unity. I hoped they would add poetry to the ride. They never really fit.
- Web tech has grown up. Browser-based 3D is powerful now. Still clunky on mobile, but impressive nonetheless.
Travel Log
A collection of snapshots from my journey and players who turned their virtual flights into postcards. The gallery is less about graphics and more about the human impulse to document a journey, even when it happens on a digital map.
Why It Mattered
Airtales was an experiment. I wanted to see if I still enjoyed game development, explore new stacks, find out which platforms are thriving, and hear from real players. By that measure, it worked. It reminded me why I like building things that don’t fit neatly into categories. It gave me a reason to keep going.
So here’s to what comes next. I’ll see you floating around the world, each of us in our own balloon, part of one oversized fiesta in the sky.
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