Job Description
Want to be a part of an indie team bound for success?
Once Upon a Puppetis an award winning 2.5D puzzle-platforming game, with beautiful 3D graphics, set for release on PC and consoles. It features a mysterious world, a stimulating combination of puzzle-solving and platforming, and a fantastical art style.
This is an opportunity for you to help us forge the story of a puppet's epic quest through an eerie and unique world of abandoned theater stages. With the team, you'll help direct gameplay and weave an impactful, memorable experience for players to enjoy.
Who are we looking for?
We are looking for a wildly creative and talented Game Designer who can analyze and tweak game mechanics and create memorable experiences within budget. You will be responsible for designing and prototyping gameplay systems, balancing, documenting design, authoring content with Unity, reacting to feedback and working with other team members to create a game that players will play, love and talk about for hours.
You will join a collaborative bunch of industry professionals, bringing ideas from initial concept/prototypes all the way to a finished product.
Come join our small team so that we can together bring puppets back to life for a new audience to enjoy!
About Flatter Than Earth
Flatter Than Earth is an independent game development studio located in San Francisco with most members working remotely beyond California. We are devoted to creating immersive fun fantasy worlds that have gameplay to match. We're a small team, so everyone here has opportunities to provide feedback and unleash their creativity! Our current project, Once Upon a Puppet aims to capture the attention and unleash the imagination of gamers of all ages! We work in Unity, and we plan to launch on digital distribution platforms and Consoles Q4 2020.
We were featured in PAX West 2017, and a video of the demo showcased at the conference can be seen by following the video link below:
PAX Gameplay Video > https://youtu.be/eyNJiY4U1Aw
Note: Current 2018 mechanics have gone through incremental after PAX improvements.
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RESPONSIBILITIES
Game Design Duties:
- Be able to comfortably tweak/polish values in Unity to achieve a flawless input-controls feel and achieve high hero behavior believability.
- Deconstruct new and existing mechanics in order to iterate and improve gameplay with specific improvements/outcomes in mind.
- Take design ownership over mechanics and systems.
- Through iterations, pursue prototypes that demonstrate and test gameplay mechanics and systems.
- Evolve designs and prototypes based on play testing and feedback.
- Work closely with the Programmer/s
- Recognize and stay abreast of game design trends, patterns, and consumer preferences.
Level Design Duties:
- Discuss and provide input on new and existing Level Designs.
- Contribute to level design sketches, ideas & moments.
Overall Duties:
- Make tradeoffs to ship a sizable amount of content, on time, at the highest possible quality.
- Drive communication and collaboration between all departments towards the approved designs. Set priorities and objectives together with key stakeholder
- Provide and receive critiques in a constructive manner with suggestions and solutions for improvement.
- Assist in advocating best practices to the content team.
REQUIREMENTS
- Experience in launching a game. A minimum of one shipped AAA or known Indie title as a designer.
- 2+ years of solid game design experience.
- 1+ year of design experience within the platforming and/or puzzle genres.
- 1+ year of Unity engine experience in game designer capacity.
- (Must have) Excellent balance, tuning, and polishing skills.
- (Must have) Have excellent feel for controls/player input and hero-character behavior & motion.
- Ability to pitch game concepts clearly and effectively.
- Good knowledge of a wide spectrum of game systems and concepts.
- Strong creative ideas and imagination, working within an overall game vision.
- Affinity for the puzzle and platforming game audiences, and an appreciation of its different player types, motivation and needs.
- Ability to see multiple perspectives for any design system and mechanic.
- Ability to identify gameplay and balancing issues and to offer solutions to fix them.
- Ability to reason both creatively and logically.
- Ability to work autonomously and think proactively.
- Must be creative and flexible when faced with constraints.
- Ability to work effectively within a small team.
- Assist in advocating best practices within team.
- Excellent communication skills; both written and verbal.
NICE-TO-HAVE
- Experience in platforming level design.
- Experience in puzzle design.
- Experience with fairy tale inspired narrative and worlds.
- Experience with git or similar version control.
- Knowledge of PC and Console technology -- its boundaries and potential as it applies to games.
IMPORTANT
- Candidates should work remotely. Covering relocation expenses is not possible at this time.
- Applicable timezones: Designers that are located between the California/USA (-8 UTC) and Warsaw/Poland (+1 UTC) timezones can apply.
- Job type: Full or Part-time.
- Salary: Dependent on knowledge, skill and experience level.
Required Application Materials
- Resume
- Cover Letter which includes:
- Why you are interested in working with us? Does our game really speak to you?
- What is your favorite platformer and/or puzzle game of all time?
- What games you do you like and are currently playing.
Job Type: Contract