The Game Wizards Video Game Production Team at The Art Institute of Los Angeles-California embarked on their fifth project in January of 2006-Monster Smash. The project originated from a thesis project by Hieu Tran, a veteran of the team. This would mark the team's last mod using the Unreal Tournament 2003 game editor.

"We chose to get back to our roots and what Unreal does best with this one, which is Death Match," said Eric T. Elder, Game Wizards Executive Producer and Game Art Academic Director. "But we still wanted to put a spin on it." Monster Smash is based on the classic Universal Movie monsters, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Werewolf, and a Witch. "We chose this theme because everyone is familiar with it, and it would give us great opportunities in designing the characters, the environments, and the mood."

Everything in the game was purely unique content, from the weapon scripts to audio to even texture sets. For instance, Frankenstein shoots powerful lightning bolts at his opponents, while the Werewolf has a howling and a slash attack. But perhaps the most interesting and most fun is the Witch, who can conjure a horde of magical cats, and then direct them to attack an opponent.

During pre-production phase, we established the core game play mechanics by testing it on a board game. Tamar and Hieu who were both Game Wizard's vets participated with Eric T. Elder. "We had a lot of fun," Tamar said, "and we worked out the balance of the characters, their powers and movement rates and even came up with a natural enemy for each."

A lot of time and effort was spent trying to nail the look and feel of the game; each team devoted two weeks to gather a monstrous library of references. The team used several classic and modern horror movie references including "The Haunting." The environment of the game is a mansion/castle where each monster has its own unique setting.