Project Details
Project Details
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Genre: Action Rogue-like
Game Engine: Tengine (In-House Engine)
Team Size: 12
3 Game Designers
4 Programmers
5 Artists
Duration: 6 Weeks
Platform: PS5
Year: 2023
Contributions
Contributions
Gameplay Design
Level Design
UI Design
Sound Design
Concept
Concept
You take control of a mechanical beetle built to exterminate ants. Designed to terminate invading ant colonies, directly out of the box.
You go down into the anthill and fight ants with the goal of defeating the Ant Queen.
The player goes through different rooms and fights off waves of ants until they reach the queen.
Pitching the game
Pitching the game
The original idea for BEETLEBOT was inspired by my love for the Armored Core series. I wanted to add a unique twist by incorporating an organic creature into the concept. Initially, the game featured an organic beetle as the protagonist, but as I developed the concept further, I decided to transition to a robotic beetle for the pitch to differate the beetle more from the ants.
From the beginning, I envisioned ants as the main enemies, leveraging the overwhelming numbers typical of an ant colony. This setup was perfect for a horde shooter, with a fast-moving beetle navigating, killing, and dodging the relentless waves of attacking ants.
I also considered the engine from the outset, knowing that a more ambitious project would be challenging. We were working with an in-house engine, where everything had to be built from scratch. This limitation made it essential to keep the gameplay simple.
Gameplay Design /// 3C
Gameplay Design /// 3C
Gameplay /// Gameloop
Beetlebot was pitched as a rogue-like game where you, similiar to many rogue-like games, choose between different rooms that offered the player different challanges. Orginally, Beetlebot would be more of a platformer but in 6 weeks in an in-house engine, we decided that a more linear approach with focus on combat would suffice.
The player gains experience (Exp) from killing ants in which they are offered a choice between 3 upgrades when they have earned the current exp limit. After killing all ants, a hole spawns where the player can move down to the next level, and this loop will continue until the reach the ant queen (Boss Level).
3C /// Camera, Character, Controls
We got the base 3C by the 2nd week and got a lot of variables us designers could experiment with and test for what felt good. We did numerous of playtests to first ensure camera and controls felt good then made small changes based on the mechanics that were later added.
Camera
We started with a classic third-person perspective, but we changed the gunplay quite a lot during development. The programmers offered us designers a way to move the camera however we'd like. In the end, we landed on a over the shoulder perspective for a better view of the enemies.
Character
The player has 4 different abilites, 2 of which are unlocked later in the game. They start with a melee attack then unlocks their blaster then lastly, a bomb. Orignally, we wanted the player to start with the blaster but after sessions of playtesting, we thought it would make more sense to start with the melee attack. The player is also able to dash, which also pushes nearby enemies away.
Controls
We had to focus on making sure the controls worked well on controller first as it was our target platform, so control scheme was a big disscussion in the team. We had to try out different inputs that we thought made sense and also had people playtest the game for their input on controls.
Level Design
Level Design
Collaborated with a team of 3 designers on grayboxing levels.
2nd week into production, us 3 designers in the team took a week to just graybox levels. We used a in-house level editor called Tensor that worked in-hand with the in-house engine, Tengine.
When we were done, we sat down together deciding what levels we wanted to use for the game, gave eachother feedback and then gave them to our environment artist to dress up.
We had to work around our game design document as we didn't have a character to play yet, so we planned our levels accordingly and made various different types of levels.
Tensor was really limited by the time we used it and had a lot of issues as it was a really new software. We had to work around these limitations and issues when working on Beetlebot, some of which made us lose our progress.
To the right are some examples of my grayboxes on Beetlebot.
Designed and grayboxed the boss level.
Boss Level - Early Idea
From the beginning, we knew that we wanted a boss battle. The whole team scrambled through different ideas to how we wanted the boss to be and ended up on a stationary boss with pillars.
We got some inspiration from Legend of Zelda bosses, more similarly to Ocarina of Time. I then sat in Unity and made mock-ups to how it could look like as we were in pre-production.
My first idea was to have 4 arch-like pillars that the player had to destroy in phases in order to damage the ant queen. The different pillars would weaken up after different phases during the boss fight and you had to shoot the pillars while they were weak.
One after another, each pillar would drop onto the queen until the roof falls down and finally defeat the ant queen.
Boss Level - Final Look
The boss level was in the works within the last 3 weeks of development. We decided on some main aspects for the boss fight:
4 Pillars that the player would have to shoot down to finish the boss.
Ant Queen would throw eggs which explodes, popping out some ants.
The Ant Queen will dig down to hide after each fallen pillar then ascend after a while to continue the fight.
Normal ants would spawn periodically to attack the player.
Instead of arches that centres to the middle, we ended up on pillars that held the roof.
Main Menu UI
Main Menu UI
Designed the UI for the main menu.
During the first week, I took on the task to do mock-ups for the Main Menu. We had the idea of the game done and we knew early on that the player would start from a package box.
Our original plan however was that the player was gonna start in the package box as a tutorial or hub area. When I made the mock-ups for it, I thought it would be interesting to start with a scene with the box and then zoom down to the box.
My groupmates then thought it would be cooler if the Beetlebot would pop out of the box and then the game would start.
(Press the arrow for more pictures)
1st Mock-up
2nd Mock-up
Final Build, Not drawn by me
Sound Design (Loud Sound Warning)
Sound Design (Loud Sound Warning)
Created, mixed and implemented sounds for the game and its cinematics.
For this project, we did not have anyone that was a dedicated sound designer or was in charge of the sounds. We knew that sounds were gonna be the last thing we were gonna do but us designers were essentially done with the more important stuff within planning.
We were really reliant on programmers to give us the tools to test things out in the game. When we finished the level design, I decided to jump in on sound design in which I used websites such as "freesounds.org" to then mix in "audacity".
swosh_test (1).mp4end_cutscene.mp4I've had previous experience with "audacity" for a horror game I made in which I created most of the sounds myself and mixed them in said software.
Making the list for all the sounds we needed for Beetlebot, I already knew from the beginning that we were gonna have ALOT of sounds and needed atleast 2-3 weeks for them.
Some sounds had to be recorded on my own because it was difficult to find sounds that fit my vision for them. The programmers also taught us designers how to implement the sounds which we did using C++ code.
death.mp4Page updated
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