Lead Gameplay Designer

Our new game is about the mesmerizing experience of interacting with wild animals.

We're looking for a designer who wants to think deeply about questions like "what helps make an interaction feel weirdly alive? Or unsettling? Or intimate?" and is ready to explore those questions by building gameplay prototypes. Our goal is to create gameplay that feels squishy, intimate, and strange. Like a grub crawling on a hand, a starfish waving its arms, or a lizard emerging from its shell but filtered through an aesthetic that includes classic fairytales, Jim Henson, and Junji Ito.

As the lead gameplay designer you'll have two major responsibilities. First, single-handedly building initial gameplay prototypes to explore potential directions. And second, coordinating and guiding the rest of the team as they flesh out the early prototypes created by you and other designers.

Making a game about animal interactions is tricky because a lot of the challenges scale up very quickly. Animals are ludicrously complicated in terms of their behavior, physics, rendering, sound design, and animation, among other things. We're hoping that you're senior AND curious enough to have had experience with a wide variety of game systems because most of our hard problems are very interdisciplinary.

We want our interactions to feel as lifelike as possible but we also don't want to spend the next two years making one seagull. Ideally you've learned some hard lessons on previous projects and can push us to ruthlessly cut things players aren't going to notice while advocating for the big swings and little touches that help create memorable moments.

You should be someone with a strong interest in using gameplay to evoke emotion and with the technical skills to single-handedly build 3D gameplay prototypes. They don't have to be beautiful just emotionally expressive.

What you'll do here

• Build rapid 3D gameplay prototypes in C++

• Review prototypes created by other designers

• Guide a small team of programmers, artists, and animators as they flesh out prototypes

• Watch regular playtests and discuss feedback

• Mentor junior designers

Must haves

• 5+ years of professional game development experience

• C++ experience OR a very strong C# background and an interest in learning C++

Nice to haves

• An interest in science and biology

• Experience with Unreal and Blueprint scripting

• Experience with Blender or Maya

• Personal projects or anything you've made that speaks to who you are and what you're obsessed with