As a Survival Game Designer, you will be responsible for designing engaging gameplay systems that challenge players to survive in dynamic, open-world environments. You'll collaborate with artists, programmers, and other designers to create mechanics for crafting, resource management, combat, exploration, and more. Your expertise in Unreal Engine, balancing survival mechanics, and player-driven systems will be key in creating a compelling, immersive experience. If you're passionate about building innovative survival gameplay and designing systems that keep players engaged, we'd love to hear from you!
Responsibilities
- Design survival mechanics, world interactions, and progression systems while taking ownership of features from concept to implementation.
- Ensure engaging and logical gameplay loops, including gathering, crafting, base-building, combat, and exploration.
- Create solutions for balance and design challenges within survival systems, such as resource scarcity, environmental hazards, and AI behavior.
- Conduct progress reviews for your systems, gathering feedback from other departments and refining based on player experience.
- Write and update documentation, clearly communicating design changes across teams.
- Take a holistic approach when implementing changes, considering their impact on various departments such as AI, animation, and UI.
- Understand player motivations and expectations within the survival genre, ensuring engaging risk-reward scenarios.
Requirements
- Ability to take ownership of a game system, communicate with all stakeholders, gather feedback, and see it through to completion.
- Strong problem-solving skills—able to create innovative survival mechanics while leveraging industry best practices.
- Deep understanding of survival gameplay pacing, including progression, tension, and resource management.
- Strong ability to empathize with new players and anticipate their expectations in an open-world survival setting.
- Ability to observe playtests, interpret player actions, and filter feedback to improve gameplay.
- High level of digital literacy and adaptability to new software and tools (e.g., Confluence, Jira).
- Attention to detail, comfortable handling complexity and iteration.
- Excellent collaboration, organizational, and communication skills.
- Comfortable in an agile development environment with evolving needs.
- Professional level of written and spoken English.
Nice to Haves
- Experience working in game engines; programming or implementation experience.
- Shipped games with strong survival or systemic gameplay elements.
- Extensive experience as both a player and designer of survival games.
- Familiarity with survival titles and their core mechanics (e.g., crafting, environmental threats, base-building, and emergent gameplay).