First off, let me say that this is our first game. All three of us are veterans of various creative environments, and building a game is surprisingly similar to putting on a theatrical production of making a movie. That said, some people might wonder just what our general process has been for this game.

Well, first off, we decided that we wanted to build a game, and decided to build it for the iPhone. (mostly because I had already done a few apps for the iPhone and I have wanted to build some games for awhile now, but did not have any viable distribution platform, the iPhone solves that problem :-)
Next we all sat down and talked about what kind of game we wanted to make and started brainstorming ideas. Most of these ideas were quite good, but not really feasible for our first game outing. We finally chose to go with the rolly-ball genre because it is a nice simple gmae mechanic with lots of room for creative level/world design.

I built a prototype game, this was very basic and was mostly just a game mechanic demo really. the 'levels' in the original prototype look nothing at all like the ones in the current release. We probably spent three or four weeks just working out the best way to have the character respond to the inputs.

We originally had a two-axis accelerometer control, and the original snowball was fully physics based. This turned out to be too realistic, and it was sorta frustrating to control. One thing we didnt like was that you had to tip the phone away from you to move forward, this made it hard to see the screen. SO we moved away from the forward-back for the throttle and added an on-screen control.
Then we slowly moved the character away from a purely physics based movement model to a more controlled pseudo-realistic model. This way we can control via code how and when the character reacts to things. Now you can speed up and slow down easier, and the turning is much smoother, giving the user a feeling of more control.
Once we had a good character control mechanic we moved onto some level designs.

We started off a bit crazy and had all sorts of ideas and sketches for level designs and artwork. Ultimately, the reality of the iPhone and the scope of the project began to put limitations on what we could and could not do. At this point we tried to standardize on a handful of puzzle mechanics. (like switches, boxes, moving platforms, snowpiles and fires). Once we had a good feel for the pieces of the puzzles we could start designing levels in earnest.

As one of us would design a level, I would mock it up with Cheetah3D, and build the level in Unity. then we would play the level and modify it until we were pretty happy with the puzzle or feat of dexterity required to pass that level.

Now that we have most of the levels finished, I am going back through each one and adding proper textures, remodeling parts that need it and generally giving them all a once over in preparation for beta testing. During this time Mike and Brent have been writing all the music.

The next step, which I am just starting on, is to get the user interface under control. Up to now it has been very minimal, just enough to start the levels and do testing. I want to go into beta testing with the UI at 95% if possible. the UI sets the mood of the game so much that it is imperative (i think) to have a representative UI to go along with the game play. (and just to be clear, by UI I mean all the screens that you have to wade through to chenage settings, the opening screen, the score screens, the 'fall out' screens, and the game elements that are part of the HUD during gameplay.)

Once we have a halfway decent UI, we will go ahead and do some wider beta testing and tweak the levels and gameplay based on the feedback we recieve from that, then it will be time to add all the final bits n pieces and submit!

Cheers!
-B