Gameplay Programmer (Unity)

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Want to be a part of an indie team bound for success ?

Puppet Quest is a 2D game mechanics driven puzzle-platforming game, with 3D graphics for PC and consoles. It features a mysterious world, a stimulating combination of puzzle-solving & platforming, and a fantastical art style.
This is an opportunity for you to help us forge a wondrous journey between a boy and his puppets. Alongside the team you'll help us to concoct gameplay and weave an impactful, memorable story.

Who are we looking for ?

Flatter Than Earth is looking for its next Gameplay Programmer to work closely with our Design and Animation departments in building the gameplay systems and features that define Puppet Quest. In this role you will help realize the creative vision for the game by using our established codebase and your own skills and abilities, building our next great gameplay experience.
You will join a collaborative bunch, bringing designs from initial concept & prototypes all the way to a finished product experience that’ll be seen by all puppet loving people.
Last but not least, we believe that in order to reach new creative highs one must have a balance between work and personal life, thus we do all we can to avoid crunch.
Yes, you guessed it right, we want this to be a time you look back on with pride and an accompanying it smile.
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. We are devoted to creating compelling visual storytelling in our games, along with (everlasting) engaging gameplay. We’re a small team, so everyone here has opportunities to provide feedback and unleash their creativity! Our current project, Puppet Quest aims to capture the attention and unleash the imagination of gamers of all ages! We work in Unity, and we plan to launch on GOG/Steam PC/Mac and consoles mid 2018.
Our trailer can be view on our website at www.FlatterThanEarth.com

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following:

• Write clear, maintainable, portable, and highly functional code
• Design and implement gameplay features within an established framework
• Design and implement modifications, reorganizations, extensions, and optimizations to existing code base
• Profile and performance tune code to remove bottlenecks
• Test and document code produced
• Work and collaborate with an interdisciplinary agile team of artists, designers, and programmers to provide technical, creative, and scheduling feedback; expand and adapt designs to meet project goals; prototype, and implement new gameplay features.
• Provide time estimates to leads and management; keep co-workers informed about progress of programming deliverables as well as non-programming prerequisites for feature implementation.
• Provide the team with feedback regarding the time allotted to assigned tasks and implementation concerns.
• Identify technical and developmental risks/obstacles and generate solutions to overcome identified risks.
• Research coding techniques and algorithms in order to keep current on technological developments and advancements in the game industry.
• Collaborate with the team to identify and fix bugs in a timely manner.

Requirements

• Minimum 12-18 months of professional game programming experience.
• A minimum of 12-18 months of Unity experience with either the 4.x or 5.x platform
• Decent comfort level extending and improving an established code base
• Programming generalist with some code architecture skills
• Have experience contributing to a wide variety of gameplay systems, such as player controls, game rules, scripting, physics etc.
• Be fluent in C# and demonstrate knowledge of good object oriented software engineering practices
• Possess exceptional problem solving and debugging skills
• Be able to write well-structured, readable code
• Have good to intermediate understanding of 2D and 3D mathematics.
• Basic raycasting, collision & intersection testing knowledge.
• Experience with performance analysis and code optimization
• Excellent communication skills with an interest in collaborating with other non-technical disciplines
• Basic understanding of what makes a game fun and interesting to play
• Enthusiasm and initiative
• Self-motivation and willingness to pitch in
• Passion for making fantastic games
• Strive to add the extra polish that truly sets games apart

Nice-to-have

• Ability to contribute innovative and original ideas towards all aspects of game production and development
• Experience deploying, patching, and supporting a live beta
• Familiar with asset pipeline architecture
• Loves/Likes platforming, puzzle-platformer, 2D action games

Important

• Location: San Francisco, California, United States
• For international candidates, you must regularly adhere to at least 4 hours of daytime San Francisco Time Zone work (10am-2pm UTC-08:00 Pacific Time)
• Job type: Full-time or Part-Time (24-40h a week)
• Salary: hugely dependent on knowledge, skill and experience level.
• This is a minimum 6 months long term contract role, with a strong bias towards extension
• We are looking for candidates that can start now.

Required Application Materials

• Resume/CV
• Cover Letter which should include:
• Why you are interested in working with us
• What games you do you like and are currently playing
• How well do you fit the job criteria

Test

After the initial application process, we will most likely ask you to perform a programming test that will be vetted by our programmers.

Please introduce yourself and send the necessary items to contact(at)FlatterThanEarth.com

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