RACHEL BOULAY
© RACHEL BOULAY

RAZZLE N' DAZZLE: THE STOLEN ZS

CUBI24 Awards winner

— ROLE

Game Designer


— DATE

April 2024


— SOFTWARE

Unity 3D, Notion


— ARTISTS

  • Cameron Lamoureux
  • Wanda Valentina Venegas Amaya
  • Ulric Boucher
  • Vincent Lalancette


  • — PROGRAMMERS

Élia Gingras

Mathias Glorieux

  • Leah Fortin

Razzle n' Dazzle: The Stolen Zs is a game created for the 2024 Ubisoft Game Lab competition wherein it won two awards. The goal of the competition is to create a video game within 10 weeks, while following the theme and constraints provided by the jury.


Razzle n' Dazzle won the awards for:


- BEST QUALITY OF THE "3CS" -


- BEST USER EXPERIENCE -


It was also nominated for Best Game Design & Best Prototype.


Theme: DREAMS

The constraints were:

- Have online multiplayer with a synching mechanic;

- Have a mechanic that varies every play session based on the previous one;

- Have a mechanic governed by AI;

- Have a fatigue mechanic;

- Have at least one accessibility setting;

- Be rated ESRB E or E10+;

  • - Have 10 minutes of gameplay;
  • - Have two pieces of concept art;

JUICY FIGHTING

We knew going in with a “Warriors” type game would be a challenge brought onto ourselves, but the team was really excited to work with this genre, so we rolled with it.


Making a good combat game isn’t just about killing enemies, but how it feels to kill them. I knew that if the combat feedback wasn’t top notch, the game would flop.


I scaled down the complexity of a Warriors game to fit the time frame and resources we have, bringing it to it’s MVP to be considered a Warriors game. Even though the team had great ideas for combos and abilities, I kept the game mechanics extremely simple, turning the focus on making sure the abilities we DID have were the best they could be on all fronts.


In the end, we were rewarded for this with the “Best quality of the 3Cs” and “Best user experience” awards. We were all extremely proud of this, as it demonstrated that even though combat is a difficult beast to tackle properly in a game, we were able to achieve it.

GDD

If you want to see a bit more into my design for Razzle n' Dazzle: The Stolen Zs, please take a look at the GDD created for it using Notion! You’ll find lots of information, like inspirational games, how the interfaces were planned out, every mechanic that was planned (even the ones that were cut out for scoping).


And if you ever want some more explanations on different parts of Razzle n' Dazzle: The Stolen Zs, don’t hesitate to message me at

boulayrachel.52@gmail.com


Please note that the GDD is in french.