Sr. Game Designer

Industry: Casual Games / Interactive Entertainment

Location: Remote (Europe), with strong overlap with CET working hours.

Employer: Confidential

Employment Type: Contract (Long-term, Full-time, 40 hrs/week)

Salary: Based on experience and fit

About the Company

Our client is an established developer and publisher of casual games, with a large portfolio of titles played across web and PC. Their games span genres such as solitaire, puzzle, card, board, match, and merge: accessible, easy-to-pick-up experiences built for a broad audience that plays for quick, everyday entertainment. The team is building new titles while continuously refreshing long-running favorites, and works in small, senior, fast-moving groups where good design decisions reach players quickly.

About the Role

This is a new, senior role and the first dedicated game design position on the team, created to raise the bar across both new and existing games. You will own casual game design end to end: researching the market, deconstructing reference games, defining core loops, mechanics, progression, difficulty, rewards, and monetization, and building playable prototypes to test ideas quickly.

The work spans two fronts. You will shape and help ship new casual titles, and you will modernize long-running games in an established catalog, bringing their features, systems, and UI up to today’s standards. A reference game is a starting point, not a blueprint: you will understand why it works, decide what to keep, change, or remove, and turn that into something you can test fast.

As the first and sole game designer on the team, you will have a rare level of ownership and work directly with company leadership. This suits a highly self-driven designer who researches independently, prioritizes with data, and moves from concept to validated design without waiting for a brief. Your work sets the direction the rest of the team builds on.

Responsibilities

Research market trends, competitors, mechanics, and reference games to spot opportunities and understand what makes casual games succeed.
Turn research, goals, and constraints into core loops, mechanics, rules, progression, difficulty, rewards, and monetization.
Write concise, implementation-ready game design specifications.
Build playable prototypes to test and validate gameplay concepts before full production.
Tune gameplay, difficulty, pacing, progression, and rewards through playtesting and iteration.
Use player feedback, metrics, KPIs, and experiment results to validate ideas and prioritize the work with the highest impact.
Lead the modernization and refresh of existing titles, bringing their features, systems, and UI up to today’s standards.
Make design decisions at every level, from core gameplay and systems to UI details, fonts, animations, and SFX.
Collaborate with company leadership, developers, graphic designers, QA, and analytics throughout development.

Requirements

5+ years of professional game design experience.
Proven experience designing and shipping casual games (solitaire, puzzle, card, board, match, merge, hybrid-casual, or similar accessible genres). This is where your expertise is grounded.
A strong portfolio of released games that clearly shows your personal contribution and, where possible, their results. A portfolio is required.
Strong market knowledge of casual games: how KPIs behave, how monetization works (ad-based and in-app purchases), and how to hook and retain players.
Solid command of design fundamentals: core loops, mechanics, systems, progression, difficulty, pacing, rewards, player motivation, and balancing.
Ability to deconstruct reference games and turn research into clear, actionable design decisions.
Ability to independently create and iterate on playable prototypes using modern, AI-assisted tools. Coding is not required; strong ideas and fast iteration matter most.
Comfort using metrics, playtests, and experiment results to guide and prioritize design.
High autonomy and ownership: able to carry a problem from research through to a validated design on your own.

Nice To Have

Experience at an established or large-scale casual game studio or publisher with commercially successful titles.
Experience designing casual titles for mobile
Experience refreshing, updating, or live-operating long-running games.

Why Join?

Own the design function from day one. This is the first dedicated game design seat, so you set the direction instead of inheriting someone else's playbook.
See your work ship. Casual iteration is fast and feedback is immediate; your decisions reach players quickly rather than sitting in a multi-year pipeline.
Real range of work. Shape brand-new titles and modernize a large, established catalog, so you get both greenfield creativity and immediate, visible impact.
Genuine autonomy. You research, prioritize with data, and take ideas to validated design on your own, backed by modern, including AI-assisted, prototyping tools.