Gameplay Polish & Technical Designer/Artist (f/m/d)

RECUR is playable end to end. The systems work, the animations exist, the levels are blocked out and the beats are in place. Some areas are final, and it is what you can see in our trailers. Our next step is to get every part of the game up to that level. We’re looking for one experienced person to spend nine months with us helping us out here!

You would take blocked-out scenes and turn them into final ones. You are not building environment art, you are building what happens inside those environments. Timing, camera, choreography, animation implementation, effects, pacing, mood.

Most of our game runs on Unreal Sequencer. Not just cutscenes, but the puzzles and time manipulation: the animations, the effects, the destruction. Sequencer is where most of the polish takes place, and it’s where you’d most of your time.

What this role is

• Taking a scene and driving it to shipping quality: owning it end to end, deciding what it needs and then doing it.
• Working in Sequencer: Refining the sequences that drive this scene: integrating character animations, destruction, little details, staging.
• Building details that spark joy: Is the box just falling down or bouncing a bit when it lands? Can the machine wiggle and create little comic “poofs” when you walk past it? Is steam coming out of the air conditioning or does some wind make papers fly around? We want you to have these ideas and add moving details that players love to discover.
• Camera work: framing, blending, movement, transitions between shots and scenes. In a game like ours the camera is a large part of the direction and atmosphere.
• Effects integration: placing, triggering and tuning existing VFX so they read clearly and hit at the right moment. (We are not asking you to author shaders and particles, though understanding how they work is a plus).
• Pacing and readability: making sure a puzzle or a traversal beat reads clearly, and that the rhythm between tension, quiet and discovery holds across a scene.
• Keeping an eye on performance and stability as scenes get denser, and flagging problems early.
• Working directly with the other designers: this is a small team, so you’ll have real ownership and short decision paths.

What we’re looking for

• Deep, hands-on Unreal Engine experience, with Sequencer being your best friend: you should be fast and confident in it. And yes, it has its pain points :/
• Experience integrating animation and effects into scenes
• A strong eye for camera, timing and staging
• You’ve shipped or significantly contributed to at least one game, ideally in an indie or small-team context where you wore several hats
• You can look at an unfinished scene and know what it needs. We don’t want to give you a “list of tasks”, but want you to also have an instinct for why a moment isn’t good and what would fix it
• Good communication in English

Nice to have

• Ideally, you can work with us in our office in Stuttgart, Germany
• Experience with cinematic platformers, narrative games, or anything else where mood and direction carry as much weight as mechanics
• An eye for lighting, setting mood, and knowing your way around Unreal light baking
• Blueprint and level scripting
• Niagara
• Experience in technical design, technical animation, simulation

What this role is not

• It’s not environment or level art, we have that covered
• It’s not authoring shaders and fx from scratch
• It’s not a pure design role either, it sits between roles

What we offer you

• Fixed-term role until August 2027 (about 9 months)
• Full-time (40h/week) or part-time, we’re flexible
• An inspiring and creative work environment
• 27 vacation days per year*
• Gross annual salary of 42k–50k EUR, depending on experience*
• Flexible work hours, with core hours from 9:45 AM to 4:00 PM (Berlin Time)
• Remote within EU possible after mutual alignment
• Coverage of public transportation costs and meal subsidies (if you are based in Germany)
• Additional company health and dental insurance (if you are based in Germany)

*Based on full-time (40h/week) for a full year. Pro-rated for the contract length and for part-time hours.

How to apply

Send us:

1. A short note on a scene, moment or mechanic in any game that you think was polished exceptionally well. Tell us what makes it work for you and why you like it! This gives us a feel on how you think and what you like.
2. Your portfolio or reel. If you can show us a scene as you received it and as you left it, that would be awesome, but its of course not a must.
3. Your CV or a list of projects and what you did on those.

Please apply via the button below.

About us:

kaleidoscube is an award-winning indie studio focussing on atmospheric stories and clever mechanics. After charming players with puppet-string puzzle platformer “A Juggler’s Tale,” we twist time and reality in our upcoming adventure mystery “RECUR.”
For more information visit: www.kaleidoscube.com