July 2, 2024

Honorable Mention: Hot-Balloon Adventure into Space – An Interactive Story

EWJ 2023 Contest Winners

Honorable Mention: Hot-Balloon Adventure into Space – An Interactive Story

Unfortunately our website does not support the elaborate hyperlinking that Puter has so thoroughly integrated into his story. Please reach out to us at jane (at) eyrewritingcenter.com for a copy of the story in its full splendour! Sorry Puter!

Guide:

Italics signify guides in the story; follow what they say.

You might get items from the interactive choices! You can note them down and see what you can get!

You should not view the pages in sequence; follow the hyperlinks for your own customized adventure experience!

THE STORY STARTS HERE!

You have a dream that will come true today. It has come true. The helper asks you if you are scared of heights, but you say not really. Woo! The day has come. It is the first time that you have ever gone on a hot air balloon!

You buckle up tight and listen to their instructions. The fire started burning! You are going to soar high in the sky! The trip was all going well until a bird landed on your arm. You can’t move because you are buckled tightly to the balloon. Right now, you have two choices: keepKeep it buckled or unbuckleUnbuckle?.

Click the hyperlink for the choice that you choose. If you can’t, go to page two for keep it buckled and page three for unbuckle.

After close consideration of the consequences, you decided to forget about the bird and keep the safety buckle on. The bird flies away after losing interest.

– Nothing interesting happened.

The sky was blue, and the clouds were white. Some looked like horses galloping, and others looked like little elves playing around. One of the clouds even looks like an UFO flying towards you! The UFO gets closer and closer, close enough that you can touch it. And the reality hits you: the UFO is not a cloud; it is an actual UFO! You quickly unbuckle your seatbelt and look around cautiously. Green aliens and weird looking beans hop out of the UFO and into your balloon. What should you do?

Currently, you have three choices. First, you can talk to the aliens. Second, you can attack them with your water bottle. Third, you can jump off the hot air balloon and land on Earth with a parachute.

Click the hyperlink for the choice that you choose.

If you can’t click the hyperlink, page 4 for attack, page 5 for talk, and page 6 for jump.

You hate birds, and you didn’t really care about the safety precautions anyway. The buckle screeches loudly and unbuckles. Frightened, the bird jumps off your arm and flees at an alarming speed. A gradient feather was dropped in the process. You examine it carefully and put it in your backpack.

– + 1x Falcon Feather

You just realized the different shapes and sizes of the clouds. Marshmallows, galloping horses, UFOs…. wait…. The UFO was getting bigger and bigger. It just looks like it’s enlarging because of the distance between the clouds, right? In this case, you are wrong. Green aliens and weird looking beans were dropped from the UFO and landed on your hot air balloon! What should you do?!

Currently, you have three choices. First, you can talk to the aliens. Second, you can attack them with your water bottle. Third, you can jump off the hot air balloon and land on Earth with a parachute.

Click the hyperlink for the choice that you choose.

If you can’t click the hyperlink, page 4 for attack, page 5 for talk, and page 6 for jump.

You throw the water bottle at the aliens. They seem startled, but nothing happened – the water bottle bounces off the green alien and lands with a CLANG! onto the floor. The green alien was angry, and he takes a bean and somehow throws it at you. You ducked, and the bean flew off the balloon, gone forever. The alien suddenly starts acting weirdly, like something is attacking him. Then, he slowly melts and melts and melts into a puddle of green water. You finally understand, these aliens probably live in a very cold place, and the heat of the fire is already making their bodies unfunctional! You empty up your water bottle and make sure it’s empty before taking some of the green liquid. Six beans still remain on the floor, and you finish your sandwich before putting them inside your lunchbox.

– + 1x Alien sample

– + 6x □ Space Beanz

Click here after you finish reading!

The aliens pushed a button, and the UFO became very small. Then they put inside the hot air balloon carefully. You try to look as calm as you can as you approach the aliens. First, you try saying hello. The aliens don’t respond, maybe because they don’t understand. You try French, Spanish, and even greeting them in Latin, but they do not respond. The only thing they do is stare at you. You even tried tapping SOS from the morse code, but they don’t show any understanding. The UFO was now close enough for you to touch it, and you make a huge choice: grab the UFO and take it away, since the aliens made it tiny…. The aliens see you do that and somehow grow wings out of their shoulders. They go up, up and away…. The ant-sized UFO does not move, and you fit it into your enormous backpack. Phew, the size was just right.

– + 1x Tiny UFO!

Click here after you finish reading!

Your heart was thumping as you take the parachute out of the emergency box. The parachute popped out like a jack – in – the – box with a tutorial. You then put it on and jump off the balloon.

Falling….

Somehow, you hit a red balloon floating around when you were just about to open the parachute. As you open it, you also fetch the balloon.

– + 1x Balloon

After that, you land carefully onto a clearing and take a cab back home. Click here after you finish reading!

Congrats! You’ve reached the end of your adventure.

Feel free to start again here!

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