Expert Combat Designer

Company Description

To create revolutionary, story-driven RPGs which go straight to the hearts of gamers — this is our mission. Want to dive deeper into our company’s culture? Explore our social media and check out our YouTube channel where we share behind-the-scenes insights and stories direct from our team members!

Job Description

CD PROJEKT RED is looking for an Expert Combat Designer to help drive the vision and implementation of the combat experience for Project Sirius — an original video game combining beloved aspects of The Witcher world with immersive multiplayer gameplay.

Reporting to the Lead Combat Designer, you will take on everything from the high-level – pitching enemy and weapon types – to the sub-second nitty-gritty – placing I-Frames and damage volumes, tweaking damage-scales, etc. You will work across disciplines, from art and animation to engineering and production, to make our game’s combat fun, satisfying and scalable from the beginning to end.

Responsibilities

• Work on key systems such as: targeting, combat metric, input queuing, player abilities and progression, aggro management (ticket system for AI), enemy behavior tree, enemy ambient behavior, and balancing.
• Develop and refine our approach to combat and foundational combat systems.
• Pitch, prototype, implement, balance and ship a wide variety of enemy types, including core enemies and bosses.
• Tune the combat experience at the micro level: animation lengths, i-frames, damage volumes, etc.
• Implement each character type’s combat behavior using techniques such as behavior trees, animation graphs and blueprint.
• Work with character art, animation, VFX and audio to ship characters with state-of-the-art levels of polish.
• Help balance combat-related systems such as player leveling and experience, weapons, and damage.
• Produce documentation to communicate your proposals and designs, and work with production to ensure they can be implemented with the time and resources available.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience in the game industry.
• Prior experience shipping a core game as a combat designer.
• Experience in developing third person action games.
• Curiosity, kindness, and a positive and professional can-do attitude.

Nice to Haves

(Please note that these skills are not required to apply for the position)

• Scripting experience, be it visual (such as Blueprint) or text-based (such as Python, Lua, or C#)
• Unreal Engine 5 experience
• Experience working with motion capture, preparing shot lists, and collaborating directly with animators.

Additional Information

This job can be hybrid/in-office from Boston or fully remote.

Health & Well-being

• Company paid medical healthcare (dental vision & mental).
• Paid Leave — 20 days of holiday for every team member per year (26 days after two years).
• No dress-code — we like to keep it casual.
• Retirement with employer matching.
• Gym Membership Reimbursement.

Perks & Professional Growth

• Flexible working hours.
• Trainings, lectures and courses — internal workshops, knowledge-sharing initiatives, online tutorials, and e-learning classes are all available. There’s always something to learn!
• Merch — gifts for newborn rebels and regular chances to nab some cool swag!
• A welcome pack filled with goodies — to help you feel right at home once you join the team.