What’s Wizard of Oz: Magic Match?

Wizard of Oz: Magic Match is a Match 3 game created by Zynga available on iOS and Android. It combines classic Match 3 elements with the Wizard of Oz brand to create a compelling gameplay experience. More information about the game can be found here.

My Role – Game Designer

I began working on Wizard of Oz: Magic Match in May 2017 as a Design Intern, and after my internship ended in September 2017  I was hired as a Contract Designer. My work as a contractor continued until March 2018 when I was brought onto the team full time as an Associate Game Designer. After working for a year in that role I was promoted to my current role of Game Designer in March 2019.

As a Design Intern I created new levels for the game and critiqued the levels made by other designers. I would then incorporate the feedback from other designers into my levels. In addition, I designed new features for the game including hazards, reward systems, game modes, and map regions. My work as a contractor was a direct continuation of the work I had done as an intern, and my contributions to the project largely stayed the same.

When I was hired as an Associate Designer I became more involved with the live operations of our game and would regularly be tasked with redesigning live levels of the game that were under performing. I also took over Design’s responsibilities in our content release process, working closely with other departments to ensure new levels were released to our players each week.

A few months before my promotion to my current role I began designing a level editor meant to be used on multiple Match 3 games created by Zynga. While heading up the design of this tool I worked closely with the engineers creating it while also gathering feedback from other designers and incorporating it into the functionality of the tool.

I’ve done work creating new tutorials for the game and updating old ones that were no longer accurate to make use of our updated tutorial system. The tutorials I’ve created have involved new power ups, side content features, and hazards in ways that were not possible with the limitations of the old system.

More recently I’ve taken on the task of managing the production of main progression levels for the game. This has involved ensuring our rate of level creation has kept pace with our weekly content releases, and final approval of level submissions.