Find a bug. Take a photo. Discover what you pulled.

I designed and built The Bug League around a simple premise: exploring the real world should be as rewarding as opening a collectible card pack.

The prototype connects photo submission, AI-assisted identification, card generation, collection, and battles. Each discovery becomes a playable character shaped by the bug’s appearance and natural defenses. A protective shell inspires armor. Chemical defenses inspire a weakening cloud.

The original photograph stays on the card. Generated artwork on the reverse gives the discovery a collectible identity.

Behind that reveal is a deliberate design choice: AI interprets the specimen; game rules constrain the numbers. Generated traits feed defined stat budgets and formulas, giving each card personality while keeping its numbers within the game’s intended limits. Holographic finishes roll separately from rarity, adding another moment of anticipation.

I shaped the experience around a repeatable loop: discover, reveal, collect, challenge. The miniature backyard art direction carries that idea into the interface, placing the league inside the world players are exploring.

The next ambition is to make rarity reflect the encounter itself. Location, season, and sighting data could make an ordinary local find exceptional somewhere else, giving players new reasons to explore familiar places.

The project brings together product design, visual identity, AI integration, game systems, and application development in a working prototype.

Every collection starts with something its owner actually found.