Lead Level Designer

Details

At a Glance

  • 4 day workweek

  • Remote-first studio

  • Close-knit collaborative team

  • Competitive salary and benefits

About Us

We make cinematic, highly polished single-player games alongside one of the best indie publishers in the business, Annapurna Interactive. It's a wildly exciting time for our studio and we'd love for you to join us on the journey of developing our flagship title, The Lost Wild.

We're a diverse mix of incredibly talented people working from all over the world with an office HQ in Brighton (UK). Work-life balance is important to us at Great Ape Games, and we operate a four-day workweek as standard. We care a lot about our team and aim to provide a creatively challenging yet rewarding and enjoyable place to work and grow.

Job Overview

We are looking for an enthusiastic and talented Lead Level Designer to join our team, working on our flagship survival horror game, The Lost Wild. You'll be instrumental in defining the levels and spaces for the entire game, working with artists, designers, and gameplay programmers to facilitate the goals and intentions of these areas.

You'll be solely responsible for designing and crafting the game's levels. We do not imagine there being another level designer to work alongside you due to the nature of the team's composition and us being a small but tight-knit AA indie studio, so you'll fully own the creation process.

The Lost Wild is a blend of large natural spaces, peppered with structural points of interest. It's important to have similar level design sensibilities that fit these requirements, and how they bleed together to support the wider gameplay and pacing.

You will be working alongside brilliant artists, designers, and programmers to help bring this ambitious game to life.

What the Job Entails

  • Prototype spaces with the team and establish functional game spaces for testing internally and externally before locking down for the final art pass.

  • Guide the process of crafting unique and engaging locations across the main acts of the game, working with art and design teams over the course of production.

  • Become the direct link between the design and environment teams in ensuring the spaces created achieve gameplay excellence while still retaining a believable and visually stunning composition.

  • Be a hands-on member of the team, helping deliver and implement levels to the highest quality while still having an eye for the bigger picture.

  • Directly running and addressing feedback from user tests, ensuring the spaces achieve their goals from gameplay, immersion, signalling, and overall intentions.

  • Mentor members via your experience and create a positive influence on the team given the lead nature of the role.

Requirements

  • Demonstrable level design experience across open and interior spaces.

  • An eye for art composition, architectural concepts, and an ability to create realistic and believable environment locations.

  • A clear competence for understanding level design across interior and large open spaces.

  • Ability to create design proposals for peer reviews.

  • Focused, motivated, and effective on all tasks through completion.

  • Proactive and self-motivated with good organizational and problem-solving skills.

Desirable

  • Involvement in a shipped game.

  • Worked at a AAA or AA studio.

  • A self-sufficient and proactive work ethic.

  • Passion for the survival horror genre in general.

  • You're into dinosaurs.

Benefits & Perks

  • A four-day (32h) workweek as standard.

  • Work from home or the office – it's up to you.

  • A genuine, company-wide aversion to crunch.

  • Private health, dental and life insurance via Vitality.

  • Predefined annual salary reviews.

  • 31 days paid holiday each year (including bank holiday entitlements plus your birthday).

  • Extra time off for special events and emergencies – no questions asked.

  • Fast-growing studio with huge potential for career advancement.

  • Quarterly team meetups (hosted by the company).

  • One hour a week of paid exercise and wellness time.

  • Allowance for personal and career development courses.

  • A flexible perks package called Juno which enables you to spend points on whatever you want.

If you feel you have something exceptional to offer, even if you don’t think you qualify for all the above, please still apply. We are an inclusive employer and if you have potential, talent and a great work ethic, we want to hear from you. 🙏

Apply Now