Hello paleo pals! We are hard at work getting Dalton's Dinos ready for you to visit, but the doors aren't quite ready to open just yet. In the third edition of our devlogs, we dive into what went into the level design of Dalton's Dinos: from sketches to grayboxing, to early blockouts, to final renders!
You can expect a new entry every month or so, where we'll talk to our dev team and share insights, concepts, and other tidbits to satisfy your curiosity before Terrible Lizards launches soon™. Without any further ado, let's chat with John of JT Music about the origins of this toothy adventure.
(Also, have you wishlisted the game yet? Be sure to click that button so you don't miss our launch!)
For us, it really depended on the space. If I was building something man-made, like Dalton's Dinos, then I usually start with sketches because the building has to make sense. You have to think about where rooms connect, how people would actually move through it, and what the space is supposed to be before you ever start building gameplay.
The caves were almost the complete opposite. They were much more organic. I'd usually establish the big gameplay beats first, throw down some large grayboxed spaces, and then ask myself, "How does the player get from here to there?" From there, I'd just start building. It was a very iterative, hands-on process where the level sort of revealed itself as I played through it.
At the end of the day, grayboxing was where the real level design happened. Sketches helped get ideas out of my head, but it wasn't until I was running, jumping, and moving through the space that I knew whether it was actually fun. From there, it was just play, tweak, repeat until it felt right.
Gameplay always came first for me. Grayboxing lets you focus entirely on whether the sequence is fun, without yet worrying about whether the room looks believable or whether every object has a purpose. Sometimes a space was literally just a floor, a few boxes, and a swing pole because all I cared about was whether the movement felt good.
That doesn't mean I was designing in a vacuum. I always knew what the space was supposed to be. I knew if I was building a mine, a museum, or an expedition site, so even the rough blockout was heading toward something. Once the gameplay felt right, I'd flesh out the space just enough to communicate that vision, and then the artists would take it from there. Because I was wearing both the game director and level designer hats, there was never really a conflict between gameplay and the world's vision. I already knew what each area was supposed to feel like, so I could focus on making the gameplay work first and trust that the rest of the team would elevate it from there.
For us, it all came down to pacing. Terrible Lizards isn't really trying to be psychological horror where the fear comes from wandering around and not knowing what's real. It's much more of a curated experience. We know where we want players to breathe, where we want them uncomfortable, where a hunt starts, where a chase ends, and where a big reveal lands. The level design is really what controls that rhythm. While grayboxing, I already knew where those moments would happen. Maybe it was a big chase, maybe it was just the Hybrid peeking around a corner for half a second before disappearing. Those ideas were always there, even if they weren't implemented yet. We built the spaces knowing we'd come back and layer those moments in later.
For me, it starts with onboarding. Early on, I was just throwing mechanics into the grayboxes because they were fun, but I quickly realized that players need to be introduced to things intentionally. Every mechanic has to earn its place. A design philosophy I've always liked, and one Nintendo uses really well, is to introduce a mechanic, let the player become comfortable with it, put a twist on it, and then finally ask them to master it.
That's essentially how we approached Terrible Lizards. Level 1 introduces the core movement. Level 2 gives players the space to really become comfortable with it. Level 3 adds new mechanics like goo bouncing and wall running, and then Level 4 builds on everything you've learned.
The challenge isn't making something difficult. That's easy. The challenge is making it feel fair. Every room, every platforming sequence, and every new mechanic was built with the question, "Has the player been given the tools to succeed here?" If the answer was no, then that wasn't a challenge. That was a design problem.
The early inspiration for Dalton's Dinos came from many themed attractions. We looked at everything from old roadside dinosaur attractions (this particularly cursed one in Tennessee) to Disney's Dinosaur ride and its queue area. There was also a lot of inspiration drawn from that broader 90s roadside-attraction aesthetic. Places that were ambitious, a little cheesy, and full of personality. That's really the feeling we wanted the attraction to have before everything goes wrong.
The caves were almost the opposite. We put together a huge mood board of real cave systems and underground spaces, but once we got into production, a lot of it came down to imagination. We had the freedom to create whatever cavern or set piece best served the gameplay, so we'd start with a fun idea and then ground it in reality afterward. As for the later half of the game, I can’t speak to inspirations for those…yet.
A typical day really depends on where we are in the development process. The work changes a lot between pre-production, production, and polish.
Early on, it was mostly building, testing, and iterating. I'd block out a space, play it, make changes, then hand it off to the art team once the gameplay felt solid. From there, we'd keep refining it before committing to final art.
Once production really got going, the process became much more collaborative. I'd hand those rough blockouts over to the environment artists, who would build what we called an "enhanced blockout." The gameplay stayed intact, but the spaces became much more representative of the final game. Walls were enclosed, proportions were refined, and the environments began to feel like real places rather than gray cubes. That gave us another opportunity to test, iterate, and move things around before anyone spent time creating final assets. From there, it’s up to the artists to realize the blockouts into real, bespoke places, with art passing.
Now that we're in polish, my role is a lot less about building new spaces and a lot more about protecting the vision. By this point, every discipline has touched the levels. Art, lighting, sound, narrative, set dressing- they're all contributing. My job is making sure all those pieces are still pulling in the same direction and that the original gameplay intent doesn't get lost as the world becomes more detailed. That's probably what most of my days look like now: small adjustments, constant playtesting, and making sure the whole experience still feels the way we intended.
Early concept of the gift shop storage room
For us, it was all about priorities. Gameplay came first, then visual language and signposting, and finally set dressing. If the space wasn't fun to move through or players couldn't naturally read where they were supposed to go, then it didn't matter how good it looked.
Once that foundation was in place, the artists really took over. My grayboxes gave them the space's vision and function, but they're the ones who turned a bunch of cubes into caves, buildings, mines, and expedition sites. Then you start layering in all the little details that make a place feel lived in. Equipment, clutter, posters, damage, lighting, and all those things that tell a story without saying a word.
You're always working with a limited asset library, so there's definitely a creative challenge in making spaces feel unique without constantly building new things. Players probably won't consciously notice the same crate or toolbox showing up in multiple places, but they'll absolutely notice if a room feels artificial or empty. That's where good set dressing makes a huge difference.
Honestly though, sound might be the biggest piece of the puzzle. Once you have the visuals, the ambiance, the little environmental noises, and the music, that's when a space really starts to feel alive.
Level design has everything to do with the player's journey. At its most basic level, it's deciding where players go, what they see, what they experience, and in what order. If we've done our job well, the game should feel natural. Players should move through the world without constantly wondering where they're supposed to go next, and that comes from a lot of iteration and playtesting.
Encouraging exploration is really just visual language and hierarchy. You start by asking yourself simple questions: Where do I want the player to go? What do I want them to notice first? If I want them to explore, what can I put in the distance that'll make them curious enough to walk over there? Lighting is a huge part of that. The brightest or most interesting area usually tells the player, "This is important," while smaller points of interest invite them to wander off and see what's there.
The other piece is giving players something worth discovering. Whether it's an interesting landmark, a cool set piece, or a hidden collectible, people naturally want to investigate what stands out. If the world rewards that curiosity, players will explore it without feeling forced.
Grayboxing can be intimidating because you're starting with a blank canvas. There were definitely times when I'd hit a wall creatively, and the best thing I could do was stop trying to force it. I'd go play other games to study how they used space. I'd start asking myself why a room felt interesting, why a path naturally pulled me somewhere, or why a certain layout worked so well. Looking at games through that lens almost always got me unstuck.
Obviously, games like Mirror's Edge and Dying Light were always in the back of my mind because they're such strong movement games, but inspiration came from all over the place. Sometimes it'd be a platformer, sometimes it'd be a completely different genre. I remember playing Star Wars Outlaws and finding myself thinking less about the gameplay and more about how the spaces were composed and what their intention was.
For me, inspiration from other games was a reset from the meat grinder of staring at textureless blocks for hundreds and hundreds of hours. It was about understanding why something worked, then applying that thinking to Terrible Lizards. Once I started approaching games from a developer's perspective instead of just a player's, I found guidance everywhere.
There are a lot of little things tucked away throughout the game if you're the type of player who likes to look around. We have plenty of Easter eggs, references to games that inspired us, little nods to the team, and some goofy moments that are in there purely because they made us laugh.
I'll leave it at that. If you take the time to explore, I think you'll find a few things that'll get a smile or a chuckle out of you. We had a lot of fun hiding them.