Why working with us is awesome

We have been fully remote since our founding in 2013.

We don’t crunch – ever. It’s never happened, not for one person, not for one day or for one hour.

There is no required time to be online. We collaborate asynchronously, so you can choose your own hours and days to work.

Your work will make people happy, and you’ll see that. Our team is small, so you’ll own specific things and see people engaging with them.

We work on games that explore novel ideas and new game design concepts. Every product tries to do something that has never been done before.

Our team is small, so there’s room to take on different kinds of tasks and to grow into new skills.

Our game community is full of knowledgeable, friendly, creative, thoughtful people.

Ludeon is wholly owned by Tynan Sylvester, a game creator. This means that unlike at investor-owned companies, our company strategy does not focus on boosting short-term growth metrics. Ludeon seeks to build long-term success by making creatively-rich products with a stable group of talented team members. At the end of it all, we want to be proud of what we’ve created and how we’ve treated team members and players.

How to apply

To apply, just email [email protected]. In your message, please:

• Say which role you’re interested in.
• Say where you’re located.
• Include a traditional resume.
• Be concise and focus on showing the things you’ve created. YouTube videos of your games, art, or projects are great starting points for this.
• For programmers, please include links to code you’ve written. Bigger projects are best, especially if we can see whole projects and how they fit together.

We are based in Canada but can hire internationally. We generally start with a trial contract.

Ludeon’s mission is to make creatively-vivacious, original, provocative, and engaging games. Our team members come from diverse origins and hold many different beliefs. Please be ready to work on this mission with people who might think differently from you.

Role: Programmer (VFX Focus)

Status: We are seeking for this role!

We seek a broadly-capable programmer with a focus on visual effects. Our studio is small, so this person’s responsibilities will span a wide variety of VFX-related work from animation to particles to rendering tech. They will need to create visual effects which are communicative, performant, beautiful, and align with the needs of the project.

Key responsibilities:

• Use a wide variety of programming techniques including pixel shaders, vertex shaders, render targets, geometry generation, and many others to create a wide range of effects for characters, creatures, environments, interactions and weapons, and UI displays.
• Create and implement animation systems and content for various purposes, potentially both 2D and 3D.
• Lend a wise voice to the decision-making process around how to develop the look of our games.
• Create and tune actual shipping visual effects: Particle emitters, animations, and so on. You will be making content, not just tools.
• Create graphics, at least at a basic level, to go with your content. Artists will also help but you will take a leading role.
• Work with designers to ensure that every visual element effectively satisfies its purpose in the design – this means making VFX communicate what’s intended to be understood, not overwhelm the scene with noise or draw undue attention, fit the intended emotional tone, and so on.
• Optimize VFX code.
• Work with existing VFX solutions like those available with Unity and make well-reasoned decisions about when to build versus buy.

• Write and maintain documentation for the VFX systems and tools. Teach others how to create.
• Synchronize and integrate audio into our VFX.

This role will likely also mean writing some non-VFX code when the need arises.

Requirements:

• Practical experience in working on large codebases and complex problems in a C-like language. C# experience is ideal since that’s what we use for most of our code, but other experience is also valuable.
• At least 3 years of experience in VFX programming for video games.
• Strong understanding of real-time rendering and optimization techniques.
• Experience with industry-standard VFX tools such as Unity, Unreal, or similar.
• Strong communication and problem-solving skills.

Experience in game design and other game dev-related skills are valuable but not absolutely necessary.

Role: Gameplay artist

Status: We are seeking for this role!

We’re seeking a talented, flexible artist who understands how to make art that serves its gameplay purpose while also looking good.

This could be a relatively junior person, or a senior up to director level. There’s a lot to do, we can use help of all levels, and there is space to grow into.

This person will:

• Create art that’s seen in-game. This includes vector-style 2D graphics (small and large), terrain and environmental textures (photosource or otherwise), particle effects and systems, meta-UI elements and icons.
• Work on UI design and graphics. Create the look of menus backgrounds and UI layout elements, icons, loading screens, diagrams, charts, etc.
• Help determine the overall look of the game by collecting reference material and discussing visual concepts with other team members. Possibly, the gameplay artist may also create paintovers, mockups, and concept art.

A great applicant will:

• Have a strong portfolio that shows the ability to create gameplay assets for games like ours.
• Be able to produce artwork that clearly communicates the gameplay situation to the player, draws the player’s eyes to the important parts of the image, and does not produce excess visual noise, while also looking good and being easy to understand for players and video/stream viewers. It’s not just about making art that looks great in isolation – it’s about making art that serves the gameplay experience, the player’s story, and the technical constraints of the project, which can require a very different approach.
• Produce a lot of work quickly.
• Be comfortable with vector and raster art, Illustrator and Photoshop.
• Be familiar with RimWorld.

The work is primarily 2D, but 3D experience is also useful.

Please note that a gameplay artist will mainly spend time creating assets for use in the game. Skills in other kinds of art, like concept art or animation, are good to have but not the main focus of this role.

This could be full-time, fixed-hours contract or hourly contract depending on how things work out. Please let me know what kind of arrangement you prefer.

 Please send a portfolio link with your application. Also, please indicate which other projects you’ve worked on, both personal and professional. Thank you!

Role: Game designer – Systems

Status: If you are an amazing designer, please reach out to us! We are not actively looking to fill a Designer role right now but we are always willing to talk to excellent applicants!

We seek a game designer with a focus on systems design. This means writing design specifications, analyzing game systems in writing and spreadsheets, and other such tasks.

Please note: This is not a programming position.

Applicants should have done substantial written work in game systems design, ideally on released games. Student projects are not enough.

Applicants should be able to demonstrate their ability at written game design analysis. Games you’ve designed before, game designs you’ve written, or articles about game design are all relevant.

Core responsibilities:

• Write game system specifications for implementation by developers.
• Work with structured data formats like XML to implement and tune gameplay data like weapons, player tools, constructibles, animals, and so on.
• Use analytical tools including spreadsheets, Monte Carlo simulation, debug tools, tester requests, and others to analyze game designs.
• Review implemented features and specify improvements, cuts, and feature replacements.
• Prioritize large lists of tasks to find the most valuable work.

Secondary responsibilities:

• Coordinate developers, artists, audio experts, testers, and others to keep the project running smoothly and set everyone up for success.
• Organize the project’s polish phase before release. Ensure that the details are handled, everything is high-quality, and nothing slips through the cracks.
• Engage with the community to understand player desires. Adapt designs to service them while also retaining your own design intent.

Non-essential but useful cross-disciplinary skills:

• You can read and write C# code enough to understand implementation details and talk to developers about them.
• You’re skilled enough with image editing to make useful UI mockups.
• You’re a good enough writer to write player-facing texts like quest descriptions, object descriptions, tutorials, and so on.
• You can create pretty good art, or at least understand the elements of an aesthetically-pleasing image.
• You can use data to implement visual effects like explosions, interaction particle effects, and so on.

Please include samples of design writing: When applying, please attach or directly link to written samples of your design specifications, design analyses, or design articles. Long documents about sophisticated game mechanics or design problems are ideal. If you have nothing to share that isn’t under NDA please let us know.

Role: Engineer

Status: We are not currently looking for immediate help with this role. However, you’re still welcome to apply! We’ll keep your info for review when any work opens up.

This is primarily a programming position. You’ll be writing code from fresh designs, updating older code, optimizing, fixing and organizing bugs, testing, and so on. Since our studio is so small, you’ll be touching many systems – AI, graphics, gameplay, and everything else.

Depending on your interest and ability, you may be involved in game design work as well. This can range from filling in details of a new system, to writing candidate designs for solving a design problem, to broader evaluations of design direction and comparisons with other games.

You may also be asked to do little bits of art or sound work, if you’re up for it.

Requirements:

• Be able to do useful programming from day one. The core of work in this position is writing code according to assignments. This means that, at minimum, you’ll need to be have practical experience in working on large codebases and complex problems in a C-like language. C# experience is ideal since that’s what we use for most of our code.
• Have programming projects of significant scope to show off. These could be mods, indie games, game engines, professional games you worked on, or something else. These can’t be typical school projects or something you threw together with pals in a couple weeks or months. As a general minimum, a “significant project” is one that you worked on most days for at least six months.
• Be productive. You should be able to get a lot of stuff done in a given span of time. While work quality must be good, the pace of it is also important.
• In your application, please include links to where I can read some code you’re written, if possible. Ideal code samples are large, complex C# game projects you worked on for years. Other samples are also useful, though.

Advantages:

• Experience in game design. This is valuable, but not absolutely necessary. Note that simply writing ideas or analyses does not count as game design experience. Implementing ideas and seeing them play out yourself is minor experience. Real experience is having other people with no relationship to you play your game and then responding to their feedback with improvements.
• Cross-disciplinary skills. Ability in art, audio, music, web design, publicity, and marketing are valuable, but not absolutely necessary.

Good to have:

• Creative output. I want to see things you’ve created – games, design articles, books, paintings, animations, music, or anything else. Even things going back to childhood. Long-standing creative passion is valuable and shows that you can actually do things instead of just having “interests”. I’m not so interested in people who are looking to get a “foot in the door” of the “game industry”. I seek the one who created things for years just for fun. It’s not enough to have passion for the idea of creating games; you need to have passion for the work of creating games.
• Curious mind. You’ve read books beyond the top sellers and can talk about the ideas in them. You know some history beyond high school and have coherent opinions on them. You know games outside the hits and have stories to tell. You have interests in subjects that other people don’t. You have sources of ideas which give you unique reference points to draw from. You have opinions about games and game development which diverge from the most common views in schools and online, because you thought of them yourself.