Behind the scenes with creator of the hyper casual game ‘Jumping Bolti’
There are a number of categories when it comes to gaming. You can be a casual gamer, who plays games just as a recreational activity, or you can be a competitive gamer, who is looking to trade blows with the best of them in eSports tournaments and against global gamers. At the extremes of this are hyper competitive gamers and hyper casual gamers.
Catriona
The meanings here are rather self explanatory. You either play the game as though there’s no tomorrow and winning is everything, or you are this extremely chilled out person who takes their own cool time when playing a game. Jumping Bolti is one such hyper casual game.
Developed by Catriona C Canagasabey, better known by her ingame name “CathCann”, ‘Jumping Bolti’ fits perfectly into the category of being a hyper casual game. At its core, Jumping Bolti is simple, or so it would seem. In reality though, it is deceptively tricky to master. You are given a ball that moves from left to right at a steady pace which is inside a rectangle. These rectangles consist of either one barrier or two barriers on either side of the rectangle. The ball will bounce between the two barriers for as long as you want.
In order to proceed, you need to get the ball to jump into the rectangle above it and so on and so forth. Therein lies the catch. While the ball is in a rectangle with barriers on either side, the ball will remain safe, bouncing back and forth. But if a rectangle has only one barrier, the ball will fall off the other side. In the event there’s no barrier on either side, the ball will fall off whichever side it moves to first.
The trick is to get the ball to jump up to the next rectangle and keep going without falling off the edge of the rectangle. My first few minutes into the game had me pressing the restart button multiple times because the ball kept falling off. And therein lies the beauty of the game. There’s no pay-to-win gimmick. No lives to be bought. It’s just you trying to get the ball into the next rectangle.
One particular thing I noticed about the game is that the rectangles were not repetitive. This meant that wouldn’t be able to memorize the pattern and win the game. Catriona added that all of the rectangles throughout Jumping Bolti were designed and programmed by her. In order to keep things interesting, the levels get more and more difficult as the player progresses. But it’s not unbeatable. As such, she shared that she placed each of the rectangles and tested each one individually from start to finish to make sure that the game was playable. So with the right amount of skill, you can win the game.
Another thing to note is the lack of advertisements that pop up. It’s usually a method of monetizing the game so that the developer can earn a quick buck. However, that is not the case with Jumping Bolti. The game is completely ad-free and will remain so for the foreseeable future. There’s even a number of balls to choose from, all for free.
Currently, ‘Jumping Bolti’ is just the beginning of the journey for Cathcann. She’s working on the second part of the game which she hopes will be completed by mid or late 2020. Currently, ‘Jumping Bolti’ is only available via the Google Play Store. This is simply because it is cheaper in comparison to the Apple Store which requires a subscription fee of $100. In comparison, publishing the game on the Google Play Store is $25.
All things taken into account, ‘Jumping Bolti’ is the perfect example of a game being developed by an individual who is fuelled by the passion for developing a game, rather than monetizing it. Quite a number of mobile games follow a pay-to-win or a monetization strategy that often prevents people from fully enjoying the game without having them fork over real world cash in the guise of microtransactions. If you would like to try out Jumping Bolti, then head over to the Google Play Store and give it a whirl.
