Studio Ellipsis is seeking a Systems Game Designer: a builder and pattern-seeker who understands that great games are living systems, not collections of features. Someone who sees structure in chaos, designs for emergence, knows how to make complexity feel effortless.
You’ll help design and refine the systemic backbone of our action title, from progression and resource frameworks, to systemic generation features, ensuring every layer contributes to the overall structure.
This is a role for a designer who can think broadly and execute deeply: analytical, technical, and systems-oriented. Someone who can step back and see the whole machine, not just its parts.
What You’ll Do
● Design, tune, and balance core gameplay systems that drive progression,
resource flow, and dynamic world behaviors.
● Translate high-level design goals into clear, scalable systems that connect
mechanics, player motivation, and content.
● Model dependencies and feedback loops between AI, combat, economy, and
world systems to ensure long-term balance and emergent variety.
● Work closely with engineering and data teams to implement tunable, data-driven
frameworks that can scale efficiently.
● Analyze telemetry and playtest data to validate assumptions, identify edge cases,
and optimize player experience.
● Establish clear system documentation and parameter hierarchies, ensuring
other designers can build within your frameworks.
● Collaborate cross-discipline (Combat, AI, Content, Technical Design) to maintain
systemic coherence and design consistency.
● Champion systemic thinking within the team, promoting elegant solutions,
simulation-minded design, and measurable outcomes.
What You Bring
● 5+ years of experience in systems or economy design on at least one shipped title.
● Proven ability to design and balance interconnected systems with multiple inputs,
dependencies, and player variables.
● Strong understanding of data-driven design workflows parameter tuning within
Unreal.
● Analytical mindset: translate qualitative goals into quantitative balance models.
● Clear communication skills, able to convey complex system logic visually &
persuasively.
● A genuine fascination for how systems behave, in games, and real-world dynamics.
● Experience designing and implementing gameplay systems in Unreal Engine.
● Shipped at least one game using Unreal Engine.
Bonus
● Experience with procedural content generation or systemic encounter frameworks.
● Familiarity with combat-driven or extraction-style PvEvP ecosystems.
● Understanding of AI behavior dependencies, rarity systems, and scaling logic.
● Background in mathematics, data analysis, or systems architecture.
● Familiarity with the Lyra Gameplay Ability System (GAS) and its application to
multiplayer.
About Studio Ellipsis
Studio Ellipsis is a Lisbon-based collective of senior developers crafting genre-defining experiences that fuse precision, mood, and mastery. We believe small, focused teams and elegant systems can create worlds larger than life.
If you see games as living machines and you love tuning the invisible math behind great experiences: we want to meet you.