Project 2: Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite (Group 10)

Team: Claire Birge, Luciano Gonzalez, Destiny Tran Saucedo-Martinez, Andrew Lesh

Table of Contents:

• Artist’s Statement
• Game Systems and Process
• Initial Decisions
• Scope
• Iteration and Testing
• Key Takeaways
• Additional Notes
• Appendix

Artist’s Statement:

Do you remember the last time you were ever told a bedtime story? For most of us, there was a single night in our adolescence – the final night we would spend under the covers, being told a heartwarming tale while we closed our eyes to sleep. Were we ever aware at that time we wouldn’t be told a bedtime story again? Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite is a small-scale digital game created for those who enjoy cute and cozy narrative games, designed to evoke a sense of nostalgia within players. We wanted to develop a game with sensory pleasure and narrative enjoyment above strict challenges, that would successfully bring a player back underneath the covers of their childhood bed through the innocent and childlike tale told through our game. 

The narrative of our game involves someone telling a child (you, the player) a bedtime story about a ladybug, which has suddenly been misplaced from its family and must find its way home. The game follows the ladybug through a series of challenges and quests, including several game styles – such as a mini escape room, a platforming quest, and a final combat scene – before ultimately making its way back home. 

Interacting with various bug characters throughout the story reveals a complex world with differing values, goals, and backstories. We developed an intentional and layered narrative that ties together different game mechanics and goals while remaining approachable and digestible for various player types. Through satisfying mechanics, stunning original graphics, and an engaging narrative, we aimed to create a short, yet complete-feeling game that will capture the attention of players and evoke childlike nostalgia.

Game System

When we began to ideate what we wanted the game to look like, we created mood boards to solidify our tonal visions. We decided to make a game with non-human characters to create a fantasy-filled world and allow for diverse players to self insert without the limitations of human looks, ultimately choosing to make the player a ladybug.

We knew that narrative would be an integral part of our game, so we outlined several potential story ideas to match our intended mechanics. We came up with 3 main storyline options, as seen below, and decided on a story that combines options 1 and 3, so that we could have the series of challenges/puzzles while still including the narrative about a bedtime story to help nail down the nostalgic factor. However, we ended up skipping the non-linear dialogue choices due to the scope of the game, and instead, had the player move freely for the quests. This allowed the player to focus more on actual gameplay as opposed to noisy and overwhelming dialogue that was non-consequential to the story progression.

 

Once we decided on our narrative, we worked on outlining the game itself and considering what mechanics we would use to create our challenging and dramatic dynamics. While brainstorming how to work on the project simultaneously without conflicts, we decided to have each group member focus primarily on one scene while we worked collaboratively on stitching them together. This would also allow each individual member a piece of control over the game that they could have creative control over, which helped our team work together more efficiently!

Then, we created a concept doc [1] where we outlined our ideas further.

P2 Group 10 – Concept Doc

 

Initial Decisions:

Coming into this game, we had a shared vision of creating a complete, well-polished game. We didn’t want it to necessarily be too mechanically advanced and preferred to focus on visual design and general gameplay experience. Therefore, we decided initially on a low-stakes player vs. game structure, where the only obstacles come from within the game itself.

Initially, we weren’t sure of the overarching objective of the game in terms of narrative, but decided to create a series of scenes within the game, each with their own objective. The game begins with an escape room, with the objective to explore and escape. The next scene is an outdoor quest scene, where the ladybug talks to various bugs and has to collect different items. This is a strong exploration objective, since the player must explore the expansive map in order to collect things. Finally, in the combat scene, there is a capture objective. In this scene, the player must defeat all of the enemies in order to finally beat the game.

We knew we wanted to create a relaxed and comfortable game, so didn’t want the stakes to feel too high. Therefore, we decided to create a positive-sum game, where the player can never “die” or lose the game, only win (as long as they make it all of the way through). This dynamic is also more consistent with our theme of a warm bedtime story, helping the player to retain immersion in the theme. 

There are a few resources for the player to collect in the game. For example, in the outdoor quest scene, the player must collect a variety of items such as flowers and berries to deliver to the ants. In a less concrete way, another resource is player actions/abilities. As each level progresses, the game introduces a new mechanic that the player can utilize, which is generally required to finish the level. Because of the tone of the game we were aiming for, we decided against using lives as a resource in the combat scene, opting for the ladybug to simply flash and bounce back when hit by an enemy.

Being a digital game, we wanted the procedures and rules to be clear within the boundaries of the game, such that you didn’t need any external knowledge or existing skills. We wanted the game to be entirely self-contained and easy to follow along with both narratively and mechanically.

Through the synthesis of these formal elements and mechanics, we decided early on that the primary form of fun that we wanted to evoke was sensation. We wanted to create a short, but complete game that just felt good to play. We wanted it to have visually appealing art and assets, immersive music, and comfortable mechanics. This was a game that we wanted to fully flesh out, as small of a scale as it may be, with hopes of having a finished game to potentially launch at the end of the course. We also wanted to create a narrative form of fun. The group decided that the tone of the game we were going for, especially considering our intended scope, was cozy and nostalgic. Therefore, we decided that using narrative to develop this tone would be an effective form of fun.

Scope:

We came in with the following goals: create a well polished game that was playable from start to end, create our own visual and audio assets, make a game that we could all be proud of. Considering these goals for ourselves, we decided the scope of our game would lie somewhere between a slice and an MVP. We wanted the game to be playable front to back just like an MVP would, but wanted to add the polish of a slice. Thus, to meet both objectives, we decided to create a somewhat short game that was highly polished. Our first meeting as a team, we described our ideal creation to be “A short, maybe 30 minute game that looks and feels really nice and that we can be proud to have created.”

This was definitely a bit of an ambitious scope, so we had to decide early on how to split up work to deliver the best product possible. We spent a few sessions brainstorming the ideas for the narrative of the game and a few mechanics, then decided to split up the work so that we were each designing a slice in a sense. Of course, splitting the work like this can lead to a very disjointed game, especially in terms of tone, mechanics, and visuals. We considered having each scene feel different on purpose to make it feel more fantasy-like and whimsical, but after talking to a few potential playtesters, decided to stay consistent in those categories.

If we had more time to finish the game, we would have liked to add more quests and scenes, as well as non-linear dialogue that may be consequential to gameplay. Some ideas we initially wanted to implement but discarded due to timing are listed below:

Narrative:

1. We hoped to include an ending sequence that visually showed the caterpillar the ladybug talked to as a butterfly. They would have a short and heartwarming conversation, involving the caterpillar expressing thanks to the ladybug for providing them with the courage and strength necessary to grow. The butterfly would then fly the ladybug back home, which would have involved a video cut-scene.
2. We had ideas to include a spider in the tree that would teach the ladybug how to fight in return for completing a quest. There was also an idea to have the player make a morally grey decision in this scene, deciding whether to free a bug in the spider’s web, or leave it so the spider can survive. Similarly, we thought of adding a bird’s nest to the tree, and the ladybug must decide whether to rescue a worm from the baby birds. 
3. We wanted to include a more complex world that involved predation and mutual suspicion between bugs – highlighting that across species, bugs don’t trust one another. This was a big narrative element we chose to leave out due to scope, but was hard to let go of. This element would have added a deeper layer to the narrative, ultimately ending in the ladybug contributing to fostering friendship (and even romance) across species. The idea of a small ladybug effectively ending “bug racism” – a term we used to describe the relationships across species – was appealing to us, as it seemed to follow a bedtime story structure more closely. With this, we had the idea of adding a cutscene to the end of our game, with all of the bugs dancing and playing together. Ultimately, we needed to scrap this in order to finish the project on time. 

Player Experience:

1. We had initially wanted each bug to have a different sounding voice that would reflect their personality. 
2. We had worked on integrating a complex dialogue system that included original art boxes, portraits, and more for each sprite. Unfortunately, it was incredibly difficult to try and shift our existing dialogue system to this new one, so we had to stick with the original implementation. An example of the dialogue boxes we had originally hoped to use is below:

To help aid our progress and stay on track, we utilized a Kanban management system. This allowed us to stay on top of our own work and be able to hold one another accountable. Having such a short amount of time to work, we needed to optimize our workflow and be able to track our collective and individual progress.

Testing and Iteration History:

Through eight comprehensive playtests [2] spanning multiple development phases, “Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite” evolved from a narrative concept into a polished platformer that successfully balances bedtime story charm with engaging mechanics. We utilized each playtest to refine core systems while maintaining our original vision of a mother’s bedtime story about a separated ladybug’s journey home.

Original Vision & Core Design Philosophy

As previously mentioned, our original vision was a  narrative-driven platformer framed as a bedtime story, following a ladybug separated from family and trapped in a child’s bedroom. The journey progresses from indoor escape through outdoor traversal, culminating in a battle against dust mites.

Some design pillars we aimed to establish early on included:

• Bedtime story framing with nostalgic childhood elements
• Authentic ladybug perspective and scale
• Emotional storytelling through integrated mechanics
• Journey structure: bedroom escape → outdoor exploration → dust mite confrontation
• Whimsical, hopeful aesthetic balancing comfort and adventure

Phase 1: Narrative Foundation & Core Concept (Playtests 1-2)

In our earliest playtests, we received a strong positive response to nostalgic childhood elements, such as the nickname prompts. Players valued emotional resonance, one citing its similarity to Undertale’s mechanics-story integration. They also enjoyed our early animation and art quality of the game, which aligned with our core values of creating a visually stunning and feel-good game.

To further improve what players enjoyed, we decided to focus further on the visuals and audio of the game. We spent even more time working on visual assets and animations, and began to work on a soundtrack that would leave players feeling nostalgic, such as a lullaby soundtrack in the beginning to reinforce the bedtime story theme. 

The earliest version of the indoor level, when the ladybug player character finds itself trapped inside a child’s bedroom, was envisioned as an escape room game similar with four static perspectives that could be moved between in order to view the four walls of a square room.

Without a functioning game yet, we focused on workshopping the game’s premise and narrative.  We used a prototype in twine to test our idea for an introduction to the game, framed as a parent telling their child a bedtime story about the player character ladybug.

With these being our earliest playtests, we made changes to focus on improving what our players/audience were responding to the most, playing into what we quickly realized were our strengths as a team.

Phase 2: Perspective Authenticity & World Building (Checkpoint 2)

At this point, we received CA and section feedback. Players suggested that they felt that the current game didn’t authentically capture a ladybug’s tiny perspective, based on the current narrative and scene assets. They mentioned how being able to see a bird’s eye view of toybox contents somewhat broke the immersion. 

We began building out the first level as a side scrolling platformer scene, rather than the much more rigid earlier concept of an escape room game with fixed perspectives.  We began experimenting with sprites and collision physics in Godot so that we could test the basics of platforming and depict the ladybug waking up in a box.  We drew collidable polygons over background art showing a stick with leaves in a box, allowing the leaves to be used as platforms.  But we were still lacking a way of exiting the box and entering the wider level.

To improve our game, we decided to rework the narrative and focus on dialogue for a bit. We also redesigned the environment and background assets, in order to enhance the integration between interactive fiction and visual storytelling. This allowed us to ensure our game maintained perspective authenticity, a factor crucial for immersion. We realized that breaking the illusion of being a tiny ladybug would undermine the core experience.

Phase 3: Onboarding & Tutorial Design (Checkpoint 3 & Playtests 3-5)

At this point in the development process, we were much more focused on developing clean mechanics. In these playtests, players noted that the wall jumping mechanics did not feel intuitive compared to traditional platformers like Mario. They felt that they needed better visual feedback for movement confirmation and struggled to complete the platform part of the game. To fix this, we continually modified the wall jumping mechanics, got someone to test the difficulty, and repeated. Tweaks made included longer time to grip on the wall, ability to double jump, and lowering the speed of the ladybug. We playtested this specific mechanic with many players outside of our primary playtests just to get rapid feedback on this mechanic. We also enhanced animations such as wing flapping and dust effects for jumps so that players could have more visual feedback on their movement.

Experimenting with tilesets, we made a functional, though sparse, version of the first level.  The player started in a much better drawn box where they could speak to a captive grasshopper (who thinks they are the box’s king).  They can jump straight out of the box and into the rest of the level, revealing they are on a table.  A dusty remote control for a toy firetruck can be found in a toy box.  If the player traverses the level to the left, they can encounter a dust mite that eats the dust off of the controller, rendering it usable.  The player can then jump on the buttons, moving the firetruck forward and backward.  This was simply done by swapping out the texture for the controller to make it appear that a button had been pressed, and by accordingly moving the firetruck node a certain distance in either direction.  If moved enough to the right, the player is able to crawl up the firetruck’s ladder and jump onto a windowsill, which causes the outdoor scene to load.

This early first level featured lots of temporary platforms and staircases to allow the player to reach each required interaction prior to us implementing proper level design with appealing platforming.  A key technical achievement was developing a script that could loop the level to the left and right, which involved maintaining a left, central, and right iteration of the level and shuffling them around as the player moved.  This created the illusion that the player could walk in a circle through the room, rather than the room being depicted as a long hallway with walls at either end.

 

We began building out the second level, which features the ladybug exploring outside the house, including an ant hill (which we felt would be a good opportunity for platforming given the extremely simple navigation of the indoor level).  Players felt that navigating the ant hill  was confusing, especially early on when there wasn’t the full narrative guidance yet. To improve this, we added directional arrows on the walls of the ant hill to guide players on where to go. Players reacted very positively to this and felt that it was an effective yet not overbearing form of onboarding.

 

We also began work on a third level to feature a combat mechanic.  Rather than building out a full level at this stage, we focused on implementing the mechanic well as a starting point.  For this, we gave the player the ability to do a “ground pound” attack after jumping to strike enemies.  If colliding with enemy characters during the attack, they fade away.  Since we didn’t want to put the player in any actual danger, we made the ladybug sprite gently flash to signify collision with an enemy, but without taking any damage.

Through this playtest, we learned that unique mechanics require careful onboarding. Rather than assuming players would understand wall jumping from other games, we created narrative-specific tutorial approaches that felt natural to the game, such as mechanics being described in the storybook opening scene (accessible through the new opening screen), and additional mechanics explained through dialogue with other characters.

Phase 4: Content Expansion & Polish (Playtests 6-8)

In our final playtests, players noted their appreciation for the polished art and animations. This was valuable feedback for us because one of our priorities from the start was to make the game feel visually polished. 

The maps and levels were mostly built out by this point, but still not entirely complete. Still, players expressed a desire for exploration rewards and environmental storytelling. They wanted to just explore the world and be able to collect things or do mini-quests/interactions just for fun, even if it didn’t impact the plot of the game. 

Based on this feedback, we expanded the outdoor scene to include more interactive elements and added random environmental objects to reward exploration. We also enhanced character interactions with conditional dialogue, allowing players to talk to characters that they have already talked to and get new responses every time. We also pondered whether we should make all collectibles accessible from the start or if we should maintain the gated progression of accessing objects.  We settled on having optional character interactions that would trigger collection missions, for example speaking with an ant doctor that needs daisy petals to make bandages, resulting in daisies on the surface becoming collectable.

We created a tree to provide continuity between the window the player escaped from at the end of the indoor level.  When the outdoor level loads, the player appears on a tree branch beside a caterpillar NPC who asks them to bring a love letter to the ant queen, encouraging the player to explore the interior of the ant hill below.  Blocked from taking a more direct route by an ant guard, the player can interact with the ant queen and other ant characters (that trigger optional collection side quests) after completing a platforming section through the underground passages. After delivering the letter to the queen, the player is directed to return to the caterpillar, which involves them completing another platforming section up through the interior of the tree, allowing them to return to where they started.

A key milestone in improving the visuals for the was achieved by using parallax layers.  By setting different visual details on different layers and changing the speed at which they scroll past the player, we created an illusion of depth for our 2D world.  This includes multiple layers of leaves in front of and behind the tree’s branches, as well as multiple layers of animated grass at the ground level.  To give the impression that the grass blades were gently swaying, we drew straight blades of grass, divided them into numerous vertical slices, and then created an animation where the slices are translated from their centerline according to a sine wave.  Simple, but very effective!

We also graduated from having purely vertical and horizontal surfaces in the outdoor level to including ramps and diagonally-positioned leaves.  To make full use of these, we improved the player controller script so that it would detect the normal direction of any surface the player was colliding with and rotate the player sprite accordingly, allowing the player’s orientation to match that of any underlying surface.  It isn’t necessary mechanically, but it’s a very nice visual flare!

We still didn’t have a great segue into the combat encounter, so we expanded it as an arena-like setting taking place at the top of the tree, which loads after the player returns to the caterpillar.  After a brief explanation of the combat mechanic provided by the ladybug’s “inner voice”, they are free to pummel a swarm of dust mites within the tree branch arena.  We were ultimately hoping to have the enemies be aphids, given that ladybugs are predators of aphids in real life, but with mounting time pressure we simply recycled the dust mite assets from the indoor level.

Per player feedback, we revamped the indoor level to use new, more polished sprites and added lots of additional interactive features, even if such interactions weren’t required to progress through the level.  We adapted a sketch pretty directly to create the final layout.  Awkward, utilitarian staircases of square tiles were replaced by much more thematically appropriate features.  For example, the player could now platform up table legs and bedposts by hopping on exposed nails and the toy bin could be entered by scaling a teddy bear.

In between the bed (hosting the dust mite NPC) and the starting area, we placed toy balls with working (but still slightly buggy) collision physics, as well as an interactive toy xylophone.  Rolling the ball around, or jumping on the xylophone keys to play notes of a pentatonic scale, isn’t necessary, but it’s fun!  And it helps convince the player that they are exploring a child’s bedroom with toys haphazardly scattered around.  We wanted the level to be fun to inhabit, beyond it simply being visually appealing and easy to explore.

 

Late-stage feedback focused on content depth and replayability. We added layers of environmental storytelling while maintaining the core narrative flow.

Phase 5: Final Changes (Final Playtest)

After our final playtest, we made a few final changes to the game based on small bugs we saw. We noticed some difficulty in platforming in the indoor scene up the bed, so modified it to make it easier. The mechanics were too difficult, so we added nails to climb the bed.

We also realized there was not enough onboarding to explain the wall jumping mechanic, so added that into the beginning tutorial. The beginning tutorial hinted at wall jumping and double jumping, but it wasn’t explicit enough for the final playtester. In terms of onboarding and clear directions, we also got feedback that we could add some dialogue to the controller that indicates that it might make the firetruck work.

Based on feedback, we decided we should also make it more clear to the players that they are trying to go outside and to go to the window. Once the player got outside, they also skipped the whole tree section, so we need to make it impossible for the player to pass the caterpillar before going down the tree.

These are changes we have already made/are currently in the process of making. Another potential idea that we had was in the opening scene to prompt the player for their name/nickname, and have that be the name of the ladybug, which we decided against.

Iteration Summary:

Early on, we focused on high-level narrative concepts and basic mechanics. In the mid-stage, we emphasized detailed perspective authenticity and onboarding systems. In late stages, we concentrated on environmental storytelling and exploration rewards

We worked hard to understand how small details (ladybug scale, animation feedback, tutorial pacing) could make or break player immersion. We were willing to completely rewrite narrative sections based on feedback, showing our commitment to our core vision while remaining responsive to player needs. 

Key Design Lessons Learned

1. Perspective Consistency is Critical

We learned that maintaining the ladybug’s tiny perspective wasn’t just a narrative choice—it was fundamental to player immersion. Breaking this perspective, even briefly, could undermine the entire experience.

2. Unique Mechanics Require Unique Onboarding

Wall jumping in a ladybug game needed different tutorial approaches than traditional platformers. We developed ladybug-specific animations and contextual hints rather than relying on genre conventions.

3. Animation as Emotional Connector

Player feedback consistently highlighted animations, particularly wing movements, as sources of delight. We learned that polished character animation was as important as level design for emotional engagement.

4. Balancing Challenge and Accessibility

We navigated tension between mechanical complexity and narrative accessibility, ultimately prioritizing smooth progression while maintaining platforming depth for engaged players. We also added a “God Mode” that would allow players to fly around the scene instead of needing to rely on the platforming mechanics. This was designed with accessibility in mind, for players who may have motor control issues, anxiety, or anyone who doesn’t want to play through the platforming.

Additional Notes:

Here, we want to highlight things we are especially proud of our work on. 

Original Visual Assets: All of our visual assets were created by us, including all sprites, background art, tiles, UI (dialogue, missions, etc.). Special thanks to Luciano and his work in the pixel art editor Aseprite for creating the majority of our sprites and tilemaps, which significantly helped the look, polish, and consistent theme of the game. Andrew created additional sprites (and much early placeholder art) in the pixel art editor Pixilart.

Original Music: Claire composed original music tracks for each of the game’s stages, including the main menu, introduction scene, indoor level, outdoor level, and combat encounter.  She took care to match the vibe that each stage sought to convey, such as a childlike wonder, bedtime story vibe during the introduction scene and an intense, but fun vibe during the final fight.

Original narrative and character dialog: The narrative premise and structure was made completely on our own, with very little (if any) inspiration drawn from existing games. It was very rewarding to create a story with a premise that was brand new, since we truly got to see our game go from concept to execution. Destiny took the lead on writing and we used no AI tools to develop the story or write character dialog.

High Polish:  We’re very happy with how the game looks, even if we would make changes to the gameplay.  We spent a lot of time making visually appealing pixel art and developing colorful, attractive levels.  Luciano’s use of parallax layers and clever animations creates a sense of depth to the leaves on the tree branches and the swaying grass at ground level.  He also made mobile dust particles that float around in the underground ant hill, as well as tiny animated ants that crawl around in the background, making the level feel alive.

Accessibility: While running out of time for implementing reconfigurable controls, we tried to make our game accessible to a wide audience.  The player character’s sprite and various interactive elements are bright and punchy, standing out against the background.  Actions like jumping are accompanied by sound cues, and displayed text is large to assist with minor visual impairment.  To account for players having difficulty with problem solving, we tried to include multiple cues for critical actions.  For example, in the indoor level, if the player interacts with the firetruck controller, they receive a message encouraging them to jump on it.  The controller’s buttons are intended to be tantalizing to jump onto, and work without initiating the hint message, but we wanted to be absolutely sure that the player would understand how to use it.  And in case the player lacks prior gaming experience with platforming games and using keyboards, we made sure to explicitly communicate all controls in the introduction scene.

Limited Experience: Only one of our project members had ever used Godot, and only very little. We were all passionate about building on an open source platform that didn’t have hidden paywalls (even though there is so much more information online about using Unity). So, with lots of patience, determination, and outdated tutorials, we learned how to use Godot! The journey was very frustrating at times, but incredibly rewarding by the end, as we have come to love the platform and hope to continue building with it in the future!  We used AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude Sonnet to assist with coding and explain Godot’s functionality to us, in addition to following video tutorials online, but we wrote all the dialog and made all the music and visual assets ourselves.

After weeks of brainstorming, learning Godot (only one of us had used it before), creating original artwork, mixing music assets, animating characters, coding, designing, playtesting, interviewing, and refining, we finally have our finished product: Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite. This cute and cozy game takes you through several different levels as a ladybug trying to find its way home. We put a lot of love, time, and effort into this game, and hope you all enjoy!

Appendix:

[1] P2 Group 10 – Concept Doc

P2 Group 10 – Concept Doc

[2] Playtests

[3] Final Playtest

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wHxt2rzmU-OqrhiQ6vH3W-ge-pH0I_b3/view?usp=sharing