Heartopia Hot Air Balloon: How to Unlock It (Aug 19 Update)

Heartopia has been running on a new version since last night. XD Inc. shut down the servers on Wednesday, August 19 at 9 p.m., reopening them on Thursday, August 20 at midnight, times given in UTC+1 in the official announcement. Since France is at UTC+2 in August, that translates locally to a downtime from Wednesday 10 p.m. to Thursday 1 a.m. So the game is up to date as you read these lines.

The maintenance notes list about thirty fixes, but two additions clearly stand out because they aren't solo activities: a hot air balloon event that only triggers on weekends, and a four-hands dress-up feature called "Looks with Friends". Photo mode, the wardrobe, and party mode also get tweaks along the way that will change your habits.

Before all that, a deadline. The post-maintenance compensation gift — 8,000 Gold Coins and 10 Stars of Happiness — has been deposited in your mailbox, and you need to claim it before 08/22 at 11 p.m. (UTC+1), that's midnight sharp in Paris, on the night of Saturday, August 22 into Sunday, August 23. It's the only thing in this update that can be permanently lost: sort it out the next time you log in, before even reading further.

Hot Air Balloon Event: level 18, two slots per weekend, nothing in the rain

This is the centerpiece of the update. XD sums it up in one sentence: hop into a hot air balloon with your friends and discover the sea of flowers from a different angle. Behind that image, the access conditions are specific, and it's worth knowing them before Saturday.

Triggering it goes through an NPC, "Young Boy Gazing into the Distance", and a threshold: starting at level 18, you can launch the event with him. The announcement writes "level 18" without specifying which meter this refers to — we won't make it up here, the in-game label will settle it.

Once the conditions are met, you don't get to choose the time: the village launches the event, on Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m. (server time). Two weekly slots, not one more. For reference, the publisher's previous announcements place server time seven hours behind Paris in August, which would put the meetup around 11 p.m. locally; check the in-game clock rather than relying on this conversion.

Then comes the clause that will ruin some weekends: in case of rain or snow, the event cannot be launched. Heartopia's weather thus becomes a planning parameter, and the announcement doesn't say whether a canceled slot is rescheduled or simply lost until the following weekend. If the sky clouds over on Saturday, keep Sunday in reserve.

Aboard: two routes, six seats

Once the event begins, the basket offers a choice: the flower fields route or the village panoramic route. Each hot air balloon holds up to 6 people. Beyond that, the group will need to split up.

One point of honesty to close: the announcement doesn't detail any reward tied to this flight. No item, no currency, no numerical progress. Any guides promising you loot this week will have made it up. As it stands, this is a social, photogenic activity, but don't hop aboard expecting a treasure chest.

In concrete terms, the first chance to test the thing falls this Saturday, August 22. It's also the day the compensation gift expires: do both in the same session and the problem is solved.

"Looks Between Friends": dressing someone else with their own wardrobe

The second new feature is more discreet but probably more lasting. It's triggered face to face, between two players, once your friendship level with a friend reaches level 2. You then launch "Looks Between Friends" and invite the person to dress you — or the other way around.

How it works is the interesting part: the one helping uses the other's clothes in real time. You don't dip into your own wardrobe to propose a theoretical outfit: you handle your partner's actual wardrobe. During the session, both players can chat and interact using emotes, and the outfit is saved once the look is finished.

A useful clarification to avoid confusion: this is indeed the friendship level between players, not affinity with the village's inhabitants. The required threshold is low — level 2 — which makes the feature accessible without having to nurture a long-term relationship.

Photo mode gets a selfie option, except at Whale Canyon

The camera gains a "selfie" mode. The game now offers three positions instead of two: default mode, first-person view and selfie. The limitation is spelled out clearly by the publisher: Whale Canyon does not yet support selfies. The word "yet" suggests the area will catch up later, though no date has been given.

In selfie mode, you can change pose and facial expression, and swipe the screen to adjust the background's viewing angle: the scenery behind you reframes independently of the character, which avoids the usual contortions needed to fit a building into the shot. Finally, the camera's zoom range has been widened and now supports a wide-angle effect. A selfie mode and a wide-angle lens the same week as a six-seat gondola — the timing is no coincidence.

The wardrobe has been recategorized: check your outfits

This is the change most likely to throw you off when opening the game. The wardrobe categories have been split more finely, and the clothing shop has been reorganized according to these new categories. Here's the announced breakdown.

In other words, a single tab becomes two or four entries, and the habits you've built up since January won't work anymore. Set aside a few minutes to go back through your saved outfits and find out where your pieces have gone.

Good news for PC players: a "quick outfit change" shortcut has been added to the "O" key. This is the direct counterpart to the recategorization — less menu navigation, an on-the-fly full switch.

Party mode: four tweaks to know

Party mode receives short but concrete adjustments. The party creation screen now includes an entry point to the gameplay tutorial, which avoids having to explain the rules to every guest.

The most structural change concerns bonuses: when the party enters its active phase, external bonus effects are temporarily disabled, then restored at the end according to their remaining duration. So you don't lose the time consumed by a bonus during the match — a leveling that puts all participants on equal footing during the competition.

On the hide-and-seek side, two usage tweaks: it is now possible to talk with strangers during the preparation phase, and the disguised players' fixed skill has been optimized — after the effect wears off, the character keeps their current orientation instead of returning to their original direction. No more involuntary about-face that gave away a hiding spot.

The schedule for the next three days

In order, then: open your mailbox as soon as you log in to collect the compensation, spend five minutes in the dressing room to get your bearings in the new categories and assign the "O" key to your muscle memory, level up to 18 if you haven't already, then find the "Young boy looking into the distance" before Saturday. The rest — selfie, emotes, "Looks with friends" — doesn't evaporate and will be waiting for you.

One last word: the weather is the only variable you don't control on this list. The publisher also specifies that the actual content of the update is authoritative in the in-game announcement published after maintenance: in case of any discrepancy with what we describe here, the latter takes precedence.