Description

You are the captain of a hot air balloon fleet, trying to pop your opponent's Crown Balloon to emerge from battle victorious. Navigate the skies of random chance and rely on strategic trickery to pop your opponent before you yourself are popped.

More simply, the goal of the game is to pop the balloon/Blink your opponent designated as the “Crown” before they pop the balloon/Blink you designated as your “Crown.” Players take turns single clicking their opponent's balloons to reduce their health and eventually pop them. Watch out for any Trap balloons! These are Blinks that will cause you to lose immediately if you pop them. The catch is, the location of each player’s respective Crown and TrapBust balloons will only be known to them. It’s a game of hidden information and bluffing! Two players recommended, but can easily accommodate more!

Setup
Distribute Balloons
Divide the Balloons/Blinks evenly among the players. Each player clusters their balloons together, and assigns each balloon a color.

Single-click a balloon to cycle between Red (high health), Blue (medium health), and Green (low health). For even fair play, make sure each player has the same number of each color. To give one player an advantage, allow them to have more high-health balloons.
Create Special Balloons
Decide how many Crowns and/or Traps each player will have. Again, for even play, each player should have the same amount.

Long Press a balloon to designate it as a Crown. Single-click it to cycle between the Crown and Trap Balloon designation. Crown Balloons appear yellow, and Trap Balloons appear purple. Long-pressing again will reset it back to a regular Balloon.

While creating these special balloons, make sure to hide your selection from your opponent - this step is where your strategic trickery begins! It might seem obvious to always select a Red Balloon as your Crown since they take the longest to pop. But your opponent knows this too, so they may start clicking the Red Balloon first. Knowing that, you could instead select a Blue Balloon as a Crown, making your opponent waste 3-6 clicks popping a non-Crown Balloon. Let the game theory begin!

Triple click one balloon on each player's cluster to move to start the game. Your Crown and Trap balloons will now appear as regular balloons, and the health of all balloons will be set based on their color.
Gameplay
On their turn, players take on of two actions:
Attack
Click an opponent's Balloon to reduce its health, shown by the number of faces lit. Each click reduces health by 1. When a balloon is reduced to 0 health, it pops, revealing whether it was a Crown, a Trap, or neither.

[diagram of slowly reducing health and death]
Fortify
You also can use your turn to fortify your own balloons. Remove a single balloon from your cluster to activate it - a single white face will appear on the Balloon. When you reconnect that Balloon to the cluster, it will transfer 1 unit of health to the Balloon it touches with the activated face.

Only balloons with at least 1 health remaining can be used to Fortify, and Balloons with 6 health cannot receive fortification.

Win Condition
There are multiple ways to win Battle Balloons. If you pop all of your opponent’s Crown Balloons, you are the winner!

[diagram of winning]

If, instead, you pop your opponent’s Trap Balloon, they are the winner!

[diagram of losing]

To reset the game, double-click any Balloon in your cluster to go back into Setup.
Alternate Setup
If you are playing with very few Blinks, you can instead give all Blinks to a single player and let them make the setup, then pass the entire cluster to the next player. That player then plays through the game with that cluster, counting the number of rounds it takes to win or lose.

In addition, you can play with more than 2 players. In a multiplayer game, you choose who to attack on your turn. If a player’s Crown Balloons are popped, they are out of the game. If you pop a Trap Balloon, you are out. The last player standing wins.