"ZombiU" was developed by Ubisoft Montpellier with an 80-person team; Ubisoft Bucharest provided additional assistance. The game's development paralleled that of "Rayman Legends", another Montpellier project. It was produced by Guillaume Brunier, with Gabrielle Shrager its director and lead writer; Brunier and Shrager had collaborated on the development of "From Dust". The team was approached by Nintendo to develop a mature game for their Wii U platform. The team developed the game using the proprietary LyN game engine. Since the hardware design was incomplete, the team made a number of prototypical games and decided that the new title would extensively utilize the Wii U GamePad. Originally conceived as a tie-in for "Raving Rabbids", "ZombiU" was described as an experiment by Montpellier in adapting the Rabbids franchise for a more "hardcore" audience. According to Guillaume, the monsters were based on the Rabbids because some people found the sound generated by the Rabbids annoying; in the game, players can "trash and destroy" them. The association with Rabbids was eliminated by Ubisoft during development, since they thought that turning Rabbids into monsters did not suit the "Raving Rabbids" franchise. Announced at E3 2011 as "Killer Freaks from Outer Space", the arcade first-person shooter had players with extravagant weapons killing small monsters.