The Meansters: Bootcamp Game

The Meansters: Bootcamp is an archery game designed and developed by Hilum Studio. The game is available in the Google Play Store for Free with no In-app purchases.

The Meansters Bootcamp Android Game

Choose a game mode from three game modes and a character out of four characters to kickstart your play. The three gameplay modes include Time Attack, Survival and Skill Play.

The game is decent and the goal is to pop the hearts and remove cupid from the throne. Gain points to unlock Mini-Means, powers and shooting platforms.



Great Day Readers! To give us more insights into the game development, Mathieu Guidon, Software Development Director responded with the answers. Here are the Q&A exclusive for our readers.

1. Tell us about the team?

Everything started back in 2008. We did a 48h game jam back in school and it resulted in a small prototype with Cupid as the protagonist but was never finished. This project was the first of many small games made during our school years. We both graduated with a major in 3D imaging and computer gaming. We did an internship at Ubisoft and Behavior respectively. After graduating, Guillaume went to work in the gaming industry in Montreal. He worked at Behavior and Bioware before leaving in joining me in a 3D CADCAM software company to be able to have creative right on his projects outside of work.

Our graphic artist Émélie joined the team right at the start of the project and brought an outside view on gaming. She bring 10 years of professional design and drawing expertise to the table and always strive to create a perfect setting in the game.

Christine handles everything else. Communications, marketing, and some administrative stuff with the help of Maude when needed.

2. What was your inspiration that leads to the creation of this game?

As I said before, the game was a game jam idea back in school. It was similar in style to the current iteration. We mixed all sort of game type to create a fun experience. The new iteration took a lot of thing from this game. We wanted to create a quick time-waster where skills would make a difference but not mandatory to progress. We also really wanted to have a nice mobile game without all the negative that often surround them like paywall, intrusive ads and the like. It was the main points that always followed us when iterating on the game.

3. What was the biggest challenge faced while developing the game?

We had multiple challenges when developing this game. It was our first real project that would be played by random people and it led to a lot of interesting discussions about what we wanted to show/give them. We had, of course, the device optimization that nearly kill the project right in the middle of it because we couldn't achieve a minimal framerate or the fact that we drained the battery so fast playing more than 10 minutes would mean losing over 30% of battery on some older models. Others issues were the motivation to keep on going after each little bump. We realize that we love to create new prototypes but lose some interest after the initial rush of ideas and having a "working" prototype. All those issues, however, come back to mixing everyone idea into 1 game and not create a mess of things later on.

4. What features can be expected in the upcoming updates?

We have 2 things that we can probably add in the next major release. We had to remove all the "story" mode levels since they were too easy and could be finished inside 30 minutes by a good player. We still have all our 40 levels and it just need some love to provide a better experience and challenge. The second thing that could make it would be an online leaderboard and achievements. We currently implemented an old school local leaderboard so you can see your progress and show you friends but it would be more interesting if you could show them anytime you beat them.

5. Is there anything else you want to tell our readers?

This game was made to show our core values. We grew up with games that were fun but challenging and we hope to keep making that kind of games in the future. This game is only a small glance at what we can do and hope to achieve some day.

We had a lot of positive feedback already about the game but always welcome more feedback and discussion!
Get it on Google Play
(This is a sponsored blog post)

Popular posts from this blog

Create Assets Folder, Add Files and Read Data From It

Image
Sometimes, we need to read the data stored in the files during runtime and want to make sure the data is not tampered by the Android build system. In this article, we will take a look at how to create the assets folder using Android Studio and read the stored data from it. First, Right-click on the module name or the package name. This opens an option window where we need to select the Assets Folder option by hovering over New and then on the Folder option. Now, we will see a window where we change the folder location and the source set. Change the values if necessary otherwise keep the defaults and click Finish. It may trigger a Gradle Sync. Irrespective of the sync, the Assets folder is created and is visible in the module. Now, Right-click on the Assets folder and click on the File option by hovering over the New option. Enter the name of the file name and click Enter to create the file. The file with the name user_details.json is created under the assets folder. Add some JSON...
Read more

How to Read Metadata from AndriodManifest File

Metadata tags are key-value pairs and one of the decent ways to access the API keys from the libraries. They are added to the AndroidManifest.xml under the application tag and are available through the PackageManager . If you have worked with third-party libraries or even with App shortcuts, Downloadable Fonts, Firebase MLKit, you may have come across metadata tags. In the article, let’s add the metadata tags to the app module’s Manifest file and read the metadata key-values and the key-resource from a library module both in kotlin and java. Add meta-data: Add metadata to the app module's AndroidManifest.xml file under the application tag. You can add as many metadata elements as you want and you can also add metadata under the activity, service, broadcast receiver, content provider tags. <meta-data android:name= "com.gsrikar.library.LIBRARY_ACCESS_KEY" android:value= "masndfiu4er9funwikesd" /> <meta-data and...
Read more

Add Spacing to Recycler View Linear Layout Manager Using Item Decoration

Image
In this article we will learn about, item decoration in Android and how we can use it to add even spacing between the child items. A RecyclerView without spacing will look like the image below but in most cases, we want to add spacing between the items. [You can see there are no margins between the views and only elevation] A more traditional option is adding margins in the list item xml file. If we take this route, we will soon end up with uneven spacing issues with vertical margins. [There are even left, right, top, bottom margins for all the rows except the last item in the first image and in the subsequent image, the top margin for the first item is half of the other items] The best way is to add the ItemDecoration to the RecyclerView as it affects the individual items and you can have more control over them. Kotlin: /** * Add vertical, horizontal spacing to the recycler view */ class DefaultItemDecorator(private val horizontalSpacing: Int, ...
Read more

Run the Emulator directly in Android Studio

Image
In Android Studio 4.1, a minor feature is released to reduce the screen (or window) switching between Android Studio and the Emulator. Using this feature, we can now run the Emulator directly inside the Android Studio. We can make the changes to the code and see the changes reflect in the emulator in the same window similar to layout XML and its preview. To achieve this, open the Preferences window and select the Emulator menu item under the Tools expandable menu. Here we can check the option Launch in a tool window and click OK . Now run the Emulator to see it inside the Android Studio window.
Read more

How to Change Material Chip Text Size, Text Style and Font

Chips in Android is a Material Design Component used primarily for actions or choice or during filters or as an input. The attributes like textColor , textStyle and fontFamily are ignored when added to the Material Chips directly. We need to modify these values using textAppearance . <com.google.android.material.chip.Chip android:id="@+id/maleChip" style="@style/Widget.MaterialComponents.Chip.Choice" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:checkable="true" android:layoutDirection="locale" android:text="@string/chip_text_male" android:textAppearance="@style/AppTheme.GenderChip" android:textColor="@color/colorWhiteText" app:chipBackgroundColor="@drawable/select_chip" app:chipEndPadding="@dimen/chip_horizontal_margin" app:chipStartPadding="@dimen/chip_horizontal_margin...
Read more