Lead Game Designer

WHO WE ARE

👋 We’re Rascal Games, a new independent studio founded by 2nd-time entrepreneurs who sold their first company to Discord. We’re fully funded with the support of seasoned game developers and investors from companies like Riot Games, Niantic, Roblox, and Discord.

PROJECT WAYWARD

We’re building Project Wayward, a shared world group-based PvE action-adventure game, inspired by games like Sea of Thieves, Valheim, and Fortnite. Our goal is to authentically capture the dream of adventuring in another world with friends. Players play as themselves, travel to story-filled worlds, and embark on thrilling adventures every night with their friends.

🎮 WHO WE'RE

We are seeking a Lead Designer to help craft the ultimate adventure experience for friends. In this role, you will partner with our CEO to refine the game vision and design various aspects of gameplay, such as co-op combat mechanics, encounters, world design, and progression.

This is a lead role that will author major parts of the Project Wayward’s player experience and our studio culture. We’re big believers in building team comps around people vs. following set meta, so some responsibilities listed can be fluid amongst the founding team.

It is critical that you embody the player we aim to serve and possess a deep understanding of their motivations. If you've spent hundreds of hours playing survival crafting games and other action-adventure RPGs with your friends, then you're the right fit!

To excel, you must have direct experience in designing and refining core player actions and combat mechanics, as this will not be a role that sits only at higher-level system design and paper prototypes. You will need to be able to be productive in Unreal.

If the idea of adventuring every night with friends is exciting to you, we’d love to talk to you!

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Create a durable adventure gameplay loop that keeps players coming back.
• Prototype gameplay in the engine to determine what is good.
• Lead the vision and iteration of core player actions, like camera, movement, combat, gathering, and character.
• Design, implement, and iterate on core gameplay systems for a shared-world action adventure game, including progression, gathering, combat, social, and more.
• Help guide the project from pre-production through launch and ongoing live support.
• Help make a fantastic game for players who play to bond with friends.
• Help build a studio that you would be proud to invite your friends to work at.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Have shipped or maintained a PvE game as a lead designer, game director, or other similar senior development roles.
• Familiarity with Unreal Engine.
• Have worked on a game from concept to launch.
• Experience in designing core player actions and mechanics for 3D games.
• Experience in developing core gameplay systems from concept to launch, as well as balancing during live operations.
• Have engine implementation capabilities, including experience with visual scripting/programming such as Blueprint.
• (Bonus) Have strong expertise in combat mechanics and design.
• (Bonus) Worked at an indie studio or built your own indie game!

YOU SHOULD JOIN US IF

• You play games to bond with friends. Your most treasured gaming memories are made with friends.
• You have experience building games from 0→1 and loved that journey.
• You enjoy brainstorming ideas and bringing those ideas to life with your own hands.
• You want to craft something new for players and put part of yourself into a game.
• You are excited to play a major role at an early-stage studio and have the opportunity to shape its direction.

BENEFITS

• Competitive salary.
• Meaningful equity. This is a founding team role with high ownership and creative control. Success should be shared!
• Medical, dental, vision coverage for you and your family because health is #1.
• Unlimited PTO with company-wide breaks during holidays. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
• Friends who will never judge you during Steam sales.

IN-PERSON STUDIO

We are operating as an in-person studio in the Bay Area or in Seattle.* We believe being together delivers better results for early stage companies.

We will cover relocation expenses.

*Final decision will depend on our ultimate team comp. Please reach out as long as in-person interests you!

HOW WE WORK

We believe small teams with trust, ownership, and empathy can build durable games played by millions. We plan to stay small and nimble (5-7 people) for the early phase, so we can freely explore and find the fun first.

• We value velocity above all else. But velocity isn’t just about building lots of things quickly, it’s getting to the right things that players actually want.
• We take personal ownership of the entire player experience, regardless of our role.
• We are our players. Just listening and understanding them isn’t enough. We have to go one step above and be them (and stay that way).
• We believe the “right” way to build is the one that serves players and our team the best and not because it’s how we’ve done it in the past.

MORE ABOUT US

We build for players who game to bond with their friends. Our players are driven by the desire to matter amongst the people they care about and they love to see their friends laugh.

We deeply value building from strong opinions. Great games are built by out-delivering for a specific player. Mediocre games are built by trying to serve everyone.

• Unapologetically Multiplayer. Our games are meant to be played with a group. We ask “how can we make it even more fun when with friends?” even if it means sacrificing the solo player experience.
• Challenging Games > Easy Games. Just like team sports, adversity brings people together.
• Let Players Be Heroes. We empower individuals to shine or fail spectacularly, making epic stories for their group. The best shared stories are ones where you played a major role.
• Play Together, Always. The best multiplayer games enable friends to always play together, no matter if they are of different groups, starting times, or duration played.
• Find the Rhythm. Stories are born from the right rhythm of play—high action moments interspersed with time to digest and make deliberate decisions (we call this the “journey”). It's our job to define a good rhythm for players.