Lift or Land

The balloon instead of the gallows

Lift or Land is the old letter-by-letter guessing game, with a hot-air balloon where a gallows would be. Launchway Games published it as an HTML5 puzzle. The tags are Casual, html5, Local multiplayer, Singleplayer, touchscreen, and Word game. A session is listed as a few minutes. Inputs are keyboard, mouse, and touchscreen. The status is Released.

A row of blank lines sits under a theme, such as a farm or the winter, with the alphabet below. Tap a letter. If it is in the word, it pops into every place it belongs. If it is not, a little air goes out of the balloon and it sinks a step. Fill in the word and the balloon floats off into the distance. Miss seven times and it settles gently onto a field, and its two passengers climb out and wave.

Seven dots down the side of the sky count the steps left. A wrong letter turns grey and is struck through, so colour is never the only cue. A letter you have already tried costs nothing. When the balloon lands, the letters you did not find fill in, in orange. The word is chosen before your first guess and never changes.

Alone or with someone

Every word is described as safe for a classroom. Each one was checked against a list of words a public screen should never show, inside the word as well as whole, because a half-guessed word shows every run of letters it holds. That check is the reason a spelled word can be refused.

Play the game's words alone. There are three levels. A win moves you up one and a loss moves you down one. Or set a word for someone and pass the screen across. Choose a theme and pick one of three words, or spell your own with the game's letters. A spelled word with an unsuitable word anywhere inside it is refused and cleared from the screen. A word someone else sets never moves your level.

There are no ads, no account, and nothing is stored on your device. That line is on the itch.io page. Lift or Land does not ask you to sign in before the first guess.

Controls

The game is playing a word by itself until you tap. That first tap starts your word and guesses nothing. Right letters fill in. Wrong ones go grey and the balloon sinks. To play with someone, tap Set a word for someone. The guesser looks away while you choose a theme and pick one of three words, or spell your own, then hand it over. The page says the speaker turns the sound on.

With a mouse, click the same way. On a keyboard, type a letter to guess it, and press Enter for the next word. When setting a word, 1, 2, or 3 picks one, and the left and right arrows change the theme. To spell your own, click Spell my own word and type it. Backspace deletes, Enter uses it, and Escape goes back.

A player on the itch.io page wrote that they guessed KEYBOARD, BICYCLE, DOVE, and TIGER, then missed LID in the kitchen round. They said the grey crossed-out letters and the sinking balloon made each wrong guess easy to read, that the passengers stepping out and waving gave a gentle finish, and that keyboard input worked. Those are that player's words about Lift or Land, not a guarantee of those exact words appearing in your round. Themes are examples. The kitchen round is one they saw.

You will find Lift or Land under its title on this site.

A round from the first tap

Lift or Land waits on a word before you touch it. The first tap does not spend a letter. After that, Lift or Land fills correct letters everywhere they belong and sinks the balloon one step for a new wrong letter. Seven misses end Lift or Land with the balloon on the field and the missing letters in orange. A win in the solo levels moves Lift or Land up one level, and a loss moves it down. A word you set for a friend never changes that level. Lift or Land keeps the refused-word check on spelled words, including words hiding inside other words, and clears the screen when it refuses one.