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Balloon Race, unlike most entries in this series isn’t a mod-gamemode. It’s simply a single Team Fortress 2 map. This map is being covered in this series with the reasoning being that Balloon Race is treated as a custom gamemode. There are servers dedicated to this map as there are for orange, Mario kart and actual genuine custom gamemodes.

With that out of the way, Balloon Race original released October 2008. The original release was unbalanced and bias towards the sniper class. It also contains optimization problems so the map was updated to version 2 later that same year. Finally, in July 2009 version 3 came out to further alleviate the map’s balance and optimization problems. Despite the fixes, version 2 and its variants are still the most popular. Today, roughly 15 servers run this map either full or part-time.

So what is Balloon Race?

Balloon Race is a map where both the teams ride hot-air balloons between control points, making stops and capturing them as they go.

The main mechanic of the map is the balloons. At the start of a round the balloons reside in a huge hanger. Once the round starts and the Balloons move forward, players who respawn must use the teleporters found in their base to get back on to their team’s balloon. Balloons slowly accelerate when a player is at the helm and slowly decelerates otherwise. Standing at the wheel is a dangerous proposition as there isn’t much cover from enemy fire. The inside of the balloon contains a source health and ammo. At every control point the balloons will automatically stop until a team has captured it. When a team captures control point, their balloon receives a speed boost. At the end of the map the team that crosses the finish line first wins.

Balloon Race is open source. Meaning much like cp orange, anyone can make changes and publish their own version of the map.

Balloon Race is based off of the map called: Wacky Races. Wacky Races was made in 2008. It featured a red and blue truck racing each other. It’s basically the same concept as Balloon race.


And that’s basically Balloon Race in a nutshell. A map utilizing interesting Source-engine elements for a unique and popular gameplay experience. A map… where you race balloons.


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• Balloon Race servers can be hard to find. Search by map name “balloon_”
  
• Balloon Race exists in other source engine games as well.
  
• I wasn’t going to originally make this episode, but multiple people suggested I do it.
  
• If one team captures all the control points the other balloon explodes.
  
• If one balloon is way behind it may take shortcuts.

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