Transformers: EarthSpark – Expedition is a three-dimensional action-adventure that brings the animated series to life. The project delivers a dynamic blend of open-world exploration, fast-paced combat arenas, and high-speed racing circuits tailored for a younger audience — allowing players to fully leverage Bumblebee's dual traversal mechanics as both a robot and a high-performance vehicle.
Launch Trailer
My Role
As Level Designer / Game Designer, I managed the end-to-end lifecycle of the game's open-world zones — from initial greybox conceptualization to final technical implementation — acting as a vital bridge between the Art and Programming departments through rigorous documentation and scripting.
Level Design & Navigation: Structuring large-scale, intuitive environments that accommodate smooth navigation for both foot traversal and high-speed driving.
Race Circuit Design: Conceptualizing, prototyping, and balancing the racing tracks and time trial circuits throughout the open world.
Combat Arena Layouts: Designing and setting up open-world combat zones, strategic cover placement, and interactive environmental hazards.
Economy & Collectibles: Managing the in-game economy through tactical asset placement, mineral distribution, and hidden collectibles to reward exploration.
System Tuning: Participating in the design, behavioral implementation, and tuning of Bumblebee's upgrade systems and general traversal mechanics.
Design Pillars
01
Dual Traversal Fluidity
Environments must seamlessly accommodate both low-speed platforming/combat on foot and high-speed vehicle driving without breaking player momentum.
02
Engaging High-Speed Racing
Circuits integrated organically into the world geometry, utilizing custom gimmicks and shortcuts to challenge the player's driving efficiency.
03
Accessible Open-World Combat
Combat arenas structured with clear readability and interactive elements, offering scalable engagement tailored to a younger target audience.
Iteration & Problem Solving
Challenge
Dual-Movement Metrics — Spaces felt either too cramped for vehicle driving or too empty and tedious for foot traversal.
Solution
Adjusted environmental scale, widening transition zones and establishing strict metric standards for road widths and turning radii to ensure both forms felt satisfying.
Challenge
Semi-Open World Player Guidance — Players frequently lost direction in large, non-linear environments, especially for a younger target audience.
Solution
Implemented strong visual scripting hierarchy, utilizing environmental landmarks, subtle lighting contrasts, and smart camera gating to guide exploration organically.
Key Takeaways
▸Designing for dual traversal modes requires rigorous metric standardization from day one.
▸Environmental storytelling and organic landmarks are critical for non-intrusive navigation in semi-open worlds.
▸Scalable mechanics ensure a smooth accessibility curve for younger player demographics without sacrificing gameplay depth.
01
Level Design
My role focused on transforming large-scale environmental concepts into structured, playable spaces — balancing freedom of exploration with directional clarity. The primary challenge was micro and macro architecture: designing a semi-open world layout that accommodates two entirely different speed metrics while intuitively guiding a younger player demographic.
In-Game Screenshots
ℹ
Note on greybox documentation: The blockout phase was carried out using a destructive technique — environment art was built directly on top of the greybox geometry without preserving intermediate states. As a result, no greybox captures are available. The screenshots below represent the final production state of the designed spaces.
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Key Points
Dual-Traversal Metric Standards: Managed the transition from initial greybox blockouts to final production, establishing strict metrics to ensure spaces felt mechanically sound both for slow-paced platforming/combat on foot and high-speed vehicle driving.
The "Golden Path" Integration: Architected the main progression route around a clear, central road system — serving as an organic visual guide that anchored the world topology and led players naturally through the level's lifecycle.
Ability-Gated Exploration: Implemented gated alternative paths throughout the levels that required players to unlock specific character abilities or upgrades to access. These hidden routes housed chests and rare collectibles, significantly driving replayability.
Environment Architecture & Scale: Collaborated closely with Environment Artists to maintain visual fidelity without compromising gameplay — adjusting road widths, turning radii, and sightlines to fit Bumblebee's high-speed vehicle form.
Interactive World Setup: Scripted and placed dynamic level assets — explosive hazards, interactable elements, and environmental triggers — to enrich exploration and add tactical layers to the open-world layout.
Map Flow — Integrated Structure
STORY LOOP — Macro
WORLD LOOP — Micro
STORY LOOP — MACRO
Biome-level progression cycle. Each new world opens exploration → ability unlock → gated zone → narrative beat.
WORLD LOOP — MICRO
Local zone cycle. The Golden Path connects bifurcation points toward arenas or circuits, which reward and reintegrate the player.
Traversal Mode Breakdown
🤖
Robot Form
Combat / Platforming
FocusMelee combat & exploration
Speed tierLow — precise movement
Space req.Arena scale: readable cover
Path typeVertical, off-road, gated
🚗
Vehicle Form
Driving / Racing
FocusHigh-speed navigation
Speed tierHigh — momentum-based
Space req.Wide roads, broad corners
Path typeGolden Path, circuits
World Biomes — 3 Zones
The game world was structured across three distinct biomes, each with its own visual identity, traversal challenges, and design constraints — requiring a unique adaptation of the Golden Path architecture and metric standards per zone. Each biome culminated in Mandroid's Fortress, a dedicated boss arena that served as the narrative climax and gating mechanism to the next zone.
BIOME 01
Arid Desert
Open terrain
Vehicle-first: Wide open roads and long sightlines prioritize high-speed driving as the dominant traversal mode.
Grand Prix scale: The biome-wide circuit uses the full map extent, leveraging open terrain for high-speed straights and dune jumps.
Sparse cover: Combat arenas designed around natural rock formations, with wider spacing between enemies.
BIOME 02
Aztec Jungle
Dense verticality
Robot-forward: Dense vegetation and ruins create tight corridors favouring foot traversal and platforming over high-speed driving.
Vertical layering: Temple structures introduce multi-level exploration, with ability-gated paths leading to upper collectibles.
Winding circuits: Race circuits navigate jungle clearings and ruin corridors — tighter corners and technical sections over raw speed.
BIOME 03
Ice Tundra
Hazardous terrain
Friction challenge: Ice surfaces required wider turning zones and adjusted road widths to account for reduced vehicle grip.
Environmental hazards: Frozen obstacles and cracked ice platforms introduced dynamic cover and traversal risk in combat arenas.
Mixed traversal: Open frozen plains balance vehicle speed with robot platforming across ice bridges and elevated structures.
BOSS ARENA
Mandroid's Fortress
End of each biome × 3
Narrative gate: The fortress served as the hard gate between biomes — completion was required to unlock the next zone and advance the story.
Dedicated boss space: Designed as a self-contained arena distinct from the open world — controlled geometry, clear readability, and focused camera framing for the encounter.
Biome expression: Each fortress reflected the visual language of its zone — reinforcing world cohesion while escalating the stakes through architecture and lighting.
02
Mission Design
To populate the semi-open world biomes and drive player engagement outside the main narrative, I designed and implemented a structured side-quest pipeline — managing the full lifecycle from NPC interaction logic to objective tracking and reward distribution.
Mission Archetypes
01 / NPC-Givers
High-Speed Racing & Time Trials
Micro & Macro Circuits: Designed short localized races alongside biome-wide Grand Prix layouts testing full map knowledge.
Dynamic Boundary Gating: Scripted boundaries that auto-activate on race start to prevent sequence breaks.
3-Tier Progression: Tuned Bronze / Silver / Gold time metrics to scale rewards and encourage optimal line mastery.
Hazard Layouts: Strategically positioned speed pads, jumps, and dynamic obstacles throughout circuits.
02 / NPC-Givers
Combat Trials
Gated Arena Encounters: Closed combat spaces triggered by NPC dialogue, locked until all enemy waves are cleared.
Archetype Blending: Curated enemy compositions forcing environmental use — elemental and explosive barrel interactions built into encounter design.
03 / NPC-Givers
Retrieval & Exploration Quests
Fetch & Tracking Logic: Scripted objective triggers requiring players to locate and recover items hidden within alternative paths.
Level Verticality: Designed routes maximizing platforming and hidden areas, rewarding players who mastered Bumblebee's movement.
03
Combat Arenas
Combat arenas were designed as dedicated, gated encounters — spacious enough to accommodate high-mobility melee combos and dynamic camera tracking, yet clearly delimited to focus the engagement. The objective was to construct readable combat spaces that encouraged environmental interaction.
Key Points
Spacious Arena Layouts: Architected encounter zones with optimized spatial metrics, ensuring ample room for dodging, executing combos, and managing crowd-control mechanics comfortably.
Environmental Interactive Hazards: Positioned tactical asset types — explosive and elemental barrels — allowing players to leverage the environment to damage or stun groups of enemies.
Destructibles & Cover Placement: Designed layouts featuring both static and destructible cover, creating a shifting battlefield topography that provided safety while forcing tactical repositioning.
Enemy Composition & Flow: Balanced encounters by blending distinct enemy archetypes with varied abilities, structuring wave compositions to introduce escalating tactical complexity without overwhelming the target audience.
04
Scripting & Game Feel
I utilized Unreal Engine 5 Blueprints to build production-ready, highly modular gameplay tools and actively participated in refining the core traversal systems — directly bridging the gap between mechanical design and technical implementation.
Race System Architecture
Checkpoint Trigger Logic: Engineered and implemented the comprehensive technical framework for the game's racing activities — scripting checkpoint progression, sequential tracking, and countdown/timer backend systems.
UI Layout & Data Binding: Handled the core race HUD layout and data binding prior to final art pass, establishing the functional layer the UI team built upon.
Boundary Gating System: Scripted dynamic level boundaries that automatically activate upon race start, soft-locking the player within the track perimeter to prevent sequence breaks and exploit paths.
Modular Barrel System — Blueprint Base Class
Engineered a modular Blueprint Base Class (Parent) for interactive environmental barrels. This scalable OOP architecture allowed the rapid creation and deployment of custom variants with distinct gameplay behaviors and damage profiles.
Variant 01
Explosive Barrels
SmallLarge
Scripted to deal high-radius Area-of-Effect (AoE) damage upon trigger — designed for clearing tight enemy groups and rewarding players who identify positional opportunities in arena combat.
Variant 02
Electric Barrels
SmallLarge
Programmed to deal damage in tandem with a custom paralysis / stun state machine — opening tactical windows for player combos and encouraging calculated, environmental play over brute force.
Dual-Form Game Feel & Traversal Tuning
Acceleration Curves: Worked extensively on adjusting and polishing the game feel (juice) for Bumblebee's dual movement states — tuning acceleration ramp-up and deceleration response for both forms.
Turning Friction & Weight: Collaborated on tuning turning friction and weight distribution to ensure transitions between foot traversal and high-speed driving felt fluid, responsive, and satisfying throughout.
Form Transition Polish: Iterated on the transformation transition itself — ensuring the swap between robot and vehicle was not only visually smooth but mechanically seamless, preserving momentum where design intended.
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Closing Notes
Expedition was a project that demanded adaptability — balancing the technical constraints of a dual-traversal system against the design requirements of an accessible, engaging open world. Working end-to-end across design, scripting, and tuning was a formative experience.
WHAT I LEARNED
Metric Discipline
Level Design Strict metric standards from day one are non-negotiable when designing for dual movement modes — retrofitting scale is prohibitively expensive mid-production.
Open World Organic navigation guidance through environmental design is far more robust than UI-dependent wayfinding, especially for younger audiences.
Scripting Modular Blueprint architecture dramatically accelerates content production — a well-designed parent class can scale to dozens of variants without rework.
WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY
Earlier Prototyping
Process I'd push for a dedicated metric validation pass with QA specifically focused on vehicle handling across all road configurations before art production starts.
Design More aggressive greybox time on race circuits — the most impactful changes always came from playing the route at full speed, not from top-down diagrams.
Collaboration Earlier cross-department alignment on traversal metric standards would have reduced the amount of environment rework required later in the pipeline.
