May 2025
- Genre: platform, single-player.
- Type: Level Blockout
- Engine: Unreal Engine 5
- Tools: Unreal Engine Blueprints, Stack-o-bot package from Fab.
- Role: Level Designer, Narrative Designer
- Development Time: 1 course week + 1 additional week for polishing based on the instructor's feedback
A Bug’s Life is part of the weekly projects within the CGMA Level Design course taught by Shane Canning. The goal for this assignment was to create a level with a massive scale theme combining prototyping and scripting to bring the level to life. A Bug’s Life aims to create engaging gameplay experience and combines dynamic aspects of level design: SFX, VFX, lighting, and movement and motion within the elements of the level.
In A Bug’s Life the player steps into the shoes of a tiny robot who must help its own kind in their mission to collect the Orbs and power up the Sacred Core. But they are not alone! The Giant is closeby and they must reach the core before he shuts down Computerland.
Taking inspiration from games like Supraland (2019, Supra Games), Tinykin (2022, Splashtean), Chibi-Robo saga (Skip Ltd.), Unravel (2915, Coldwool Interactive), Grounded (2022, Obsidian Entertainment) or It Takes Two (2021, Hazelight) where players control tiny or small characters in huge worlds or universe and where perspective and scale play a big role in the player experience, the narrative and the art.
Hihglights
The theme for this assignment was “Massive Scale” and the goal was to build a level where the player is a tiny character within a huge world.
The main character is an small cute robot from the Fab package Stack-o-bot that is inside a computer CPU world where players can find fans, RAM memory, circuits, lights, etcetera.
The key to reprenset this massive scale theme was to compare the interior of the CPU with the exterior: players can always look at the room where the CPU is located and they always get the sense of a massive scale world.
The player experience is all about momentum, rhythm, and curiosity. Movement is smooth and responsive, with air jumps, jetpack boosts, and fan puffs that let players chain together satisfying traversal combos. It’s a platforming journey packed with energy, style, and satisfying mechanical flow.
Along the way players must collect the long-awaited orbs to fuel up the Core of the CPU! To collect all the orbs, the player must navigate this world inside a CPU, tackling platforms and obstacles to collect them all. Each area presents unique traversal challenges and environmental hazards.
A world that offers players fun and entertaining challenges, with a level of difficulty accessible to less experienced players.
Another key aspect of the level is the setting and the environment because this CPU world isn’t just a backdrop — it’s alive with activity and feedback.
As players traverse the motherboard, they will encounter a variety of hazards and surprises. Other friendly and anxious robots that populate the world, adding moments of charm.
But they will also encounter moving platforms, hidden secrets beneath the circuits, chipsets, challenging fans, or sizzling memory cards. With smooth controls, dynamic level design, and a blend of tension and wonder.
The visual style blends chunky pixel textures and CRT-style distortion with sleek cyberpunk design, glowing wireframes, and pulsing neon lights.
It’s a world that feels both nostalgic and cutting-edge — like jumping through the guts of a forgotten arcade machine wired into a dystopian network. The level is bathed in bold color palettes: electric yellows, clean whites and greys, and glitching greens that dance across the screen.
The mix of analog grit and digital glow gives the environment a distinctive rhythm, making movement feel like a dance through a neon-drenched machine. It's not just about collecting orbs — it's about immersing yourself in a vibrant, retro-futuristic world where every jump is framed in light and every corridor feels alive.
Gameplay Overview and Design Techniques
For this level, my main goal was to design an accessible challenge for players, so that both experienced and less experienced players could enjoy the platforms and dynamic environment.
A fun and easy-to-play 3D platform game level inspired by games such as Super Mario 64 (1996, Nintendo), Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (2014, Nintendo) and Sackboy: A Big Adventure (2020, Sumo Digital).
The setting allows the player to enjoy a platforming experience throughout the entire level, where jumps, jetpack jumps, fans and moving platforms will prove challenging.
Like the games mentioned as inspiration for the platform challenges, for A Bug's Life I also wanted to add a layer of narrative and storytelling that would allow players to immerse themselves in this world of circuits.
The level includes areas that players can explore if they wish, discovering hidden secrets, impressive views of both the interior and exterior of the CPU world and audiovisual feedback from the environment.
The level offers a simple but fun narrative in which a small robot must help its fellow robots collect Orbs and activate the so-called Sacred Core. This civilisation lives in Computerland, a CPU belonging to the Giant.
The architectural design of the blocking forms leading lines that draw the player’s attention to the main landmarks and point of interest, as well as to the Orbs they must collect.
There are several landmarks that serve as an orientation anchor and helps player to navigate intuitively through the level: the memory RAM cards, the towers, the bronze and neon tubes and the fans.
The setting of A Bug's Life offers players a dynamic and lively environment that conveys movement. This world is filled with elements that evoke the interior of a CPU: RAM memory cards, working fans, circuits, lights, the core, ports, chips, processors...
An environment that feels alive and attracts players' attention thanks to the combination of architectural, visual and sound elements.
Pre-Production
For this assignment, the instructor of the course set the Massive Scale theme so I began this blocking by exploring possible directions with a brainstorming session. The goal for this session was to define the setting and the overarching narrative of the level. I wanted to move away from more hackneyed stories and narratives such as a world on the scale of toys, insects or people. After considering a few different options, I found a fun portfolio in Artstation called Boti Byteland that inspired to try something similar by using the famous Stack-o-bot package from Fab.
- Early Concept: This weekly task only required documentation on the references listed above. As soon as I established a clear direction for the game, I defined the main mechanics: walking, running, normal jumping, jumping with a jetpack, and jumping with fans. All of these mechanics are combined with exploration of the environment and setting, as well as interaction with characters through dialogue and orb collection.
- Reference Gathering: as mentioned before, the main inspiration for this level in terms of theme and aesthetic were Supraland (2019, Supra Games), Tinykin (2022, Splashtean), Chibi-Robo saga (Skip Ltd.), Unravel (2915, Coldwool Interactive), Grounded (2022, Obsidian Entertainment) or It Takes Two (2021, Hazelight. These games revolve around characters who are tiny compared to their environment: miniature perspective, with over-scaled environments, a whimsical atmosphere, a combination of platforming and exploration and the wonder of the mundane through a miniaturized lens.
- Map: With only a week to work on this level prototype, I wanted to design a simple environment that would allow for easy traversal of the space and platforming. Taking inspiration from the level design of Super Mario 64 (1996, Nintendo), I started with a rough sketch of the main platforms and jumped right into Unreal to create the prototype and test it out. While testing the platforms to make the course fun and challenging, I began adding additional challenges, such as fans and moving platforms.
- Narrative: A Bug’s Life is a relaxed 3D platforming game where you play as a charming, tiny robot who must collect the Obrs distributed along the CPU to power up the Sacred Core! This level is set inside a computer CPU whch is located in the room of the so-called The Giant, as the robots from Computerland know him. This level invites the player to engage in fun but accesible platforming challenges as they discover this world of circuits and chips.
- Character and Blueprints: for this level assignment I used the project Stack-O-Bot from Fab: from the game mode, rigged characters and controllable player-character to blueprints such as the Orb Collector blueprint, the interaction blueprint or the open doors blueprints. However, some Blueprints such as the Dialogues and the Splines I created them myself from scratch.
- Beats: given the nature of this platforming level, the beat graph of A Bug’s Life represents a classic difficulty curve of a ‘flow state’, meaning that the level difficulty is slightly above the player’s skill, but not so tough as to feel that it’s impossible. A first challenge to complete and get that feeling of achievement necesseary to progress through the level. As the player advance to the next platforms, their skills improved and they can keep completeing new challenges.
- Goals and Restrictions: as I mentioned before, the main goal of this level was to combine the fun challenges of the platforming with a setting and an environment that feels alive. An interesting space to traverse, explore and complete the challenges that it offers to players. Another key goal was to create a memorable space for players with recognizable items from computer and CPUs imagery. Reconizable shapes and computer parts that serve as landmarks and points of interest at the same time so players don’t get lost. One of the main restrictions for this level was the short time to design and prototype it with only one week of work.
Level Blockout
The first elements I modelled in this blockout were the main platforms, with the aim of establishing a clear pace throughout the level.
The next steps in the blockout phase consisted of modelling the remaining elements of the level, as well as adding decorative elements with a more realistic appearance to add a little flavour and aesthetics to the level.
One of the key goals of the setting was to design a memorable envinronment with clearly recognizable items from computer and CPU imagery.
The main focus of the blocking stage was to build a clear pace with proper player guidance within the desired environmental tone and aesthetic intended for the level — including the lighting layer that plays a key role in the theme and atmosphere of the level and in the gameplay feeling.
Finally, the polishing phase included implementing NPCs (both humans and animals, with splines and animations where needed), realistic physical barriers to define the playable area, as well as SFX, VFX, and NPC dialogue. In this assignment the use of SFX and VFX was crucial to put into practice the knowledge learnt about realistic and dynamic levels that enhace the player experience and immersion in the game world.
Conclusions and Learnings
- This project helped me dive into platforming games and to design interesting challenges for the players, as well as allow me to gain experience in playtesting and iterating this video game genre.
- I think I was able to create a relatively polished level blockout with fun platforming challenges for the players within a cool aesthetic and atmosphere.
- I was able to build from scratch the splines Blueprints in Unreal Engine, as well as strengthen my knowledge in scripts for dialogues, as well as SFX and VFX assets management in Unreal.
- The limited time available to complete this course assignment led me to design a more contained map.
- For this project, I chose to jump into 3D in Unreal as quickly as possible to start building and testing the environment with only a very rough sketch of the level. This approach resulted in a lot of trial and error and a longer overall blocking phase.
- Lack of environmental hazards to provide the level with greater difficulty and variety in the challenges presented to the player.Limited NPC dialogue throughout the level, which could have added an extra layer of realism and engagement for players.
- Apply the knowledge acquired during that week of the course on the use of SFX, VFX, animations, dialogues, and more, with the goal of creating vibrant and engaging environments for players.
- Strengthen my understanding of spatial composition and the use of landmarks, points of interest, and focal points.
- I gained new knowledge in Unreal Engine Blueprints by developing a script for splines dedicated to character movement, as well as improving fluency and confidence in their use
If I could start over and do something different, I would focus on adding more environmental hazards to create more gameplay variety, as well as adding more surprise moments to reward the player's curiosity and exploration.