Everyone has played it as a kid: keep the balloon off the floor. Now imagine doing it through spikes, wind fans, and laser traps, in a secret lab, with three friends, knowing that if you fail, everyone burns. Keep It Up!, a co-op party game from London publisher Alibi Games and four-person American indie developer Hitbox Entertainment, has passed 500,000 demo downloads.
To celebrate the milestone, the team debuted a new trailer at The MIX Fall Showcase highlighting fresh aspects of the game.
Keep It Up! takes the childhood game of keeping a balloon in the air and expands it into an absurd obstacle course. Up to four players move as a team, and the moment the balloon touches the floor, it pops.
The twist with real bite: when the team runs out of lives, the final balloon explodes and every team member is incinerated.
Protect the Balloon, Survive the Course
The gameplay is intuitive. Use your hands, your head, and anything else you’ve got to bounce the balloon forward to the goal. The path is anything but easy, though: sharp spikes, gusting fans, deadly laser traps, and tricky obstacles crammed into narrow corridors all stand in the way.
The setting adds to the charm. It’s all an experiment inside a secretive research complex called The Facility, and the developers’ offbeat tone shamelessly calls every one of these ordeals “science.”
Friendship-Ruining Chaos
The highlight is the friendship-wrecking potential. Teamwork is the foundation, but players can also punch an obstructive teammate out of the way to clear a path. In a game built to make you cooperate, smacking your friends across the room creates hilarious chaos, and the real-world arguments over who dropped the balloon are the biggest laughs of all.
15 Rooms, a Physics Playground Lobby, and In-Game Voice Chat
There are 15 challenge rooms in total, with difficulty ramping up sharply as you go. The level design is tuned to appeal to both casual players who just want to reach the end and speedrunners who demand precision.
Built-in voice chat makes screaming your way through co-op part of the fun. Even the waiting room is something special: a physics-enabled lobby where friends can flail around between runs. Items collected during play can be used to customize characters.
The playable character, called Dumm-E, can be customized with hairstyles and outfits, and even its facial structure can be finely sculpted using more than 25 sliders.
From Touring Band to Debut Game
The team’s background is as unusual as the game. Hitbox Entertainment is made up of four close friends: Andrew, Ben, Billy, and Mitch.
They are industry veterans with experience across art, audio, tech, and design, and were once members of a touring band. Keep It Up!, started in February 2026, is the first game they’ve made together after trading music for game development.
London publisher Alibi Games sums up the game’s identity with a playful label: “FriendSLAP.”
Who This Is For
Strong fit for: friend groups who love chaotic co-op party games; fans of physics-driven, voice-chat-fueled games where failure is half the fun; speedrunners looking for tightly designed rooms; players who enjoy deep character customization.
Cautious fit for: solo players, since it’s built for teams of up to four.
Less ideal for: anyone who takes losing personally. This game is designed to make you blame your friends.
What to Watch For
Half a million demo downloads within about eight months of development starting is a strong signal of demand. The open questions now are a release date, pricing, and whether 15 rooms provide enough replay value for a full launch. The friend-group co-op space is crowded, but Keep It Up!’s simple, universally understood premise gives it an unusually easy hook.
The Takeaway
Keep It Up! turns a game every child knows into a gloriously stressful co-op gauntlet, complete with laser traps, punchable teammates, a “science”-obsessed research lab, and a team-wide incineration penalty. Built in just eight months by four former bandmates, it has already found half a million players through its demo. If the full game keeps that energy, it has a real shot at becoming the next friend-group staple.
Demo: available now on Steam. Full release: TBA.
| item | detail |
|---|---|
| Developer | Hitbox Entertainment (USA) |
| Publisher | Alibi Games (London, UK) |
| Genre | 4-Player Co-op Obstacle Action (Balloon Launching) |
| platform | PC (Steam) |
| Release date | Unconfirmed |
| price | Unconfirmed |
| Player count | Up to 4 players co-op |
| Key Achievements | Demo downloads surpass 500,000 (as of October 16, 2026) |
| Steam Page | Shortcut |
