Mystic Balloon

Stage 43

Mystic Balloon is a sickeningly cute puzzle game made by freeware developers Domino and Fumina Matajurou with Delphi 6. According to the history, Domino originally intended to develop for another genre, and somewhere along the line, he realized his engine-in-progress was better suited to making a mind-numbingly difficult puzzle game.

In Mystic Balloon, you play as a young witch, Mystia, who wanders into a creepy old castle on her way home one day. Unfortunately, after getting inside, she discovers too late it’s a labyrinth from which she can never escape. Players have to guide Mystia through all 50 stages of the game to the ending. After finishing the game, an omake area with 5 extra stages and a new player will be unlocked. And after that …? You’ll have to beat the game to find out.

Level Editor

The translation is 100 percent complete (even the READ.ME). However, the Help file is not. Most of the documentation in the help file is found in the readme, and I could hardly justify the trouble of disassembling the Help file to HTML and recompiling it, especially when it’s not even accessible off the game menu.

The game includes a Stage Editor for players who want to inflate Mystic Balloon’s challenge. Domino’s Web site already hosts over 800 stages for free download, and this Web site includes its own stage database for foreign stage designers to use.

There are two glitches. If you are using a Windows system set to Japanese locale or an actual Japanese or Chinese Windows XP install, the text overlay will not match the bitmaps they appear on top of. Using Microsoft AppLocale to run the game in English will not fix this problem. The second glitch is some of the credits are garbled. Check the English readme to see what they should be.

I cannot mirror the install files or levels at this Web site, as Domino’s license agreement requires prior consent to redistribute materials from the archive, BBS or homepage.

If you’re a fan of puzzles, Mystic Balloon isn’t a game to pass up.

Released Files

patch v1.0
This contains the NINJA patch for Mystic Balloon. The patch is compressed with 7zip because it’s rather large. Sorry, no choice this time. If you need a 7zip capable archive utility, try the free TUGZip.