Hot Heads – Flying High, But Not Too High

There’s something funny about hot air balloon racing. It looks peaceful. Blue skies, colorful balloons, everyone floating around. But in Hot Heads, it really isn’t like that.

You’re all trying to climb higher and higher… while knowing that the one who flies the highest at the end basically loses that whole column. I mean, that’s such a simple twist, but it changes how you look at every single card.

In this game, you’re competitive balloon pilots. The goal sounds easy: score points by gaining altitude. But if you’re the highest in a balloon type when the game ends, that balloon gets swallowed by the storm and scores nothing.

So yes, you want to rise. Just not too much.

And honestly, that balancing act is the whole point.

👥 2-5 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 25 minutes
📝 Designers: Jeroen Geenen & Vera Quispel
🎨 Artwork: Gustavo Furstenau

🏢 Publisher: Jolly Dutch (review copy provided)

Gameplay Overview

The game revolves around four balloon types. In front of you, you can build up to four columns, one per type. Balloon cards add positive values and go on top of a column. Ballast cards are negative and slide under the column, pulling it down.

I like how that looks on the table. The stack actually grows upward in front of you. It’s simple, but it makes sense immediately.

On your turn, you draw one card and play one card. That’s it. You can play to yourself or sometimes to an opponent. No complicated phases, no extra steps.

But then there are the storms.

Four storm cards are placed through the deck in a structured way. You don’t know exactly when they’ll show up, but you know they will. When someone draws one, the game pauses and the storm phase starts.

First storm, everyone plays one card face down into their own area. Second storm, two cards. Third, three. Fourth, four. Then you reveal them together and resolve them. Balloon and ballast cards get added to your columns. Special cards are discarded during storms.

After a storm phase, if it wasn’t the fourth one, the player who drew it takes a replacement card and continues their turn. That can sometimes cause storms to follow each other quickly. It doesn’t happen every time, but when it does, you feel it.

After the fourth storm is resolved, the game ends immediately. No final round to repair your situation.

For scoring, you look at each balloon type separately. Add up the values in that column. The highest total in that type is removed completely. If players are tied for highest, they all lose that column. Then you count what remains. Most points wins.

There’s also a dummy pilot in two-player games, but most of our plays were with more people, so that’s where our impressions come from.

Artwork, Components, and Visual Design

The look of the game is bright and playful. Lots of blue skies. The balloons are exaggerated and expressive. Big rubber duck balloons lifting people in hanging bathtubs, smiling cats flying in cat-shaped balloons, and slightly mad inventors in strange flying machines with wires and little sparks everywhere. It doesn’t take itself seriously, which fits the gameplay.

The numbers are clear and easy to read. The icons stay visible even when columns grow taller, which matters because you constantly check who is getting too high.

The special cards are easy to recognize. The news helicopter sits above a column and gives three points if that balloon survives. Sabotage looks like someone planning something slightly evil on a clipboard. Storm cards are darker and stand out clearly.

Component quality is fine. It feels solid. It’s a card game and it feels like one.

What I appreciate most is how the table looks halfway through a game. Everyone has these vertical stacks rising in front of them. You can literally see who is drifting too far upward.

Our Experience

The idea that the highest balloon gets removed works really well at the table. From the first few turns, you’re already thinking, okay… how far can I go without becoming the target?

Early on, people build carefully. Nobody wants to stand out too much. You watch others. You hesitate before playing that strong positive card.

The storm phases really decide how the game unfolds. The first one feels manageable. By the third and fourth, you start worrying about what’s left in your hand. I’ve seen players forced to add several positive cards during a late storm and suddenly realize they’ve gone too far. And there’s no chance to fix it afterward.

Sometimes that leads to a satisfying finish. Other times it feels a bit unforgiving. Especially if the last storm pushes you into first place without much you could do about it.

Ties for highest can be rough. Matching someone’s total just to pull them down with you is completely valid. For some groups, that’s fun. For others, it can feel like you’re deciding who loses rather than focusing on your own plan.

A lot depends on who you play with. With players who like reading each other, it becomes a game of watching reactions and trying not to look too successful. With more reactive players, it becomes more chaotic, with swings in different directions.

And yes, more than once the safest strategy was simply staying second in every type. Which sounds strange when you say it out loud. Aim for second. That’s the dream, apparently.

Our Thoughts

For me, the strength of Hot Heads is how easy it is to understand. Draw one, play one. The twist is visible on the table from the beginning.

The way the storm cards are spaced through the deck helps a lot. You know four storms will happen, but you can’t predict the exact timing. That uncertainty means you’re never completely comfortable, but it also doesn’t feel chaotic or unfair.

In our plays, it worked better to stay competitive in several balloon types rather than pushing too far in one. If you hover just below the top in multiple columns, you’re less likely to lose everything in one category at the end.

Using sabotage at the right moment matters. Playing it early just to annoy someone doesn’t do much. Playing it late to shift who ends up highest can change everything.

That said, not everyone will enjoy the direct interaction. You can push opponents up, pull them down, or remove cards. If your group prefers building something peacefully without interference, this may not be the right fit.

For us, Hot Heads sits in that space of interactive card games where reading the table matters as much as counting numbers. It’s not about long-term planning for ten turns ahead. It’s more about adjusting, reacting, and sometimes accepting that you climbed a little too far.

And honestly, losing because you aimed too high is at least thematically consistent. You flew into a storm. What did you expect?

📝 We received a copy from Jolly Dutch.

📝 Extra note

Jolly Dutch also gave me a personal affiliate code: TABLETOPPING.

With this code you get 10% off a Jolly Club yearly subscription in the first year (so €60 becomes €54 in the Netherlands). The Jolly Club is currently only available in the Netherlands and Belgium, and the Belgian subscription is slightly more expensive because of shipping.

If you decide to use the code, I receive a small commission. No pressure at all, of course. Just sharing it in case you were already considering it.

More info: https://jollyclub.nl/