Balloon Maze is a bubble-popping game that features party balloons instead of traditional bubbles. It shares similarities with Pop-It and pinball games by offering repetitive play and sounds that create relaxing sensations in the player's brain.
The player's goal is to pop all the balloons inside high-wall mazes of different sizes and shapes. They perform this task by rolling a white ball through the balloons or allowing the balloons to drop, float or roll onto the ball. The balloons disappear and leave behind paint splatters.
The game only allows the player to direct the ball's movements by rotating each maze. It presents the mazes as three-dimensional wooden boards similar to offline Labyrinth and similar board games. That said, the boards feature wider channels that look almost like hallways or rooms.
Balloon Maze makes play difficult in several ways. It sometimes hides a ball behind a balloon. The player needs to rotate the board to reveal the ball's starting position. In some levels, the game increases the number of balloons, changes the direction of a rotation to the opposite of what the player might expect, adds indents to the smooth side walls, and makes some channels narrow or hard to reach.
The game helps offset new challenges by offering the player new tools. For example, they might receive one or more extra balls or even portal-style holes that teleport a ball to another area of the maze.
