The Dinoball Level is one of the first full-length levels we've produced for Catball Eats It All. When we first began discussing the game design, we found we shared a love for the multi-planet miniworld levels of Super Mario Galaxy, and decided to go a similar route. This opened up doors of creativity for us, and after lots of fun brainstorming we came up with the idea of a dinosaur-themed planet, and got to work.

Level sketchup: The first step was sketching out a general shape of the planet, done by our game designer Matt. Having an addictively fun level and replayable was top priority, so every hill, valley, and obstacle was designed with that in mind. Here is the initial sketchup, done in Adobe Illustrator:

Initial playtesting: Before having our artist spend lots of time painting up the level, we wanted to make sure the basic design was fun and workable. After the Illustrator sketchup was finished, we placed it into Unity, a game development software, and added the mesh, which is the physical element of the level that responds to actual objects in-game. Matching up the level outline to the mesh took several hours, and was followed by playtesting. 

Playtesting can only be done by spending hours and hours playing the Catball, very SERIOUS work! Here is a close-up shot of the Catball in Dinoball-level, before painting:

Level painting: After playtesting was finished and we approved the level for production, we gave the greenlight for our artist Yis Goodwin to start painting up the Dinoball. To do so, Yis printed out a large version of the level, painted directly onto the piece, and scanned it back in:

Game implementation: After painting was complete, Yis would turn it back to Tyson, our tech lead and programmer, to drop into the game. Some tweaking was necessary to make sure that the painting would match up with the mesh, which was the architecture of the level - while the painting was purely visual, the mesh reflected all of the actual physical interaction between all the pieces. We needed the painting to match up with the mesh so there wouldn't be any funny business like Catballs floating through the ground or Dogwalls not eating Catballs.

Screenshot of the Dinoball level, being tested in Unity:

Here is the Dinoball, decorated:

So there you go! A visual walk-through of how we designed a level, albeit simplified. I did not include much of the technical side, which involved constant adjusting and tweaking of the Catball physics, alignment of the painting to the mesh, adjusting of visual elements, and more, but I hope it gives you an idea of what's involved in making a level for Catball Eats It All. Finally, I leave you with a screenshot of the Catball in the latest version of Dinoball (note: Catball is not to scale):