Who we are

👋 We’re Rascal Games, a new independent studio founded by 2nd-time entrepreneurs who sold their first company to Discord. We build games that are unapologetically multiplayer.

We’re fully funded through Series Seed with the support of seasoned game devs and investors like Patron, Mitch Lasky (early investor at Riot Games, thatgamecompany, Manticore Games), Stephen Lim (co-founder of VALORANT & Raidbase), Stanislav Vishnevskiy (co-founder of Discord), and a16z SPEEDRUN.

Project Wayward

We’re building Project Wayward, a shared world group-based PvE action-adventure game, inspired by games like Sea of Thieves, Valheim, and Fortnite.

Our goal is to capture the dream of adventuring in another world with friends. Think of the Fellowship traveling through Middle Earth or Frieren and Fern on their journey to the far North.

Who we’re looking for

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, 3C & Gameplay with deep multiplayer experience to join us. In this role, you will focus on prototyping and implementing combat and movement mechanics that players will want to do over and over again because they’re fun!

Project Wayward attempts to push the boundaries of 3rd person action co-op, and you will be responsible for many of our core player mechanics. The ideal candidate is someone who’s passionate about creating co-op “player verbs” that are fun, feel fantastic to use, and bring laughter to friends (wombo combo), especially if those ideas seem a bit crazy.

A strong sense of game feel and knowledge of character control is a must, as well solid understanding of animation in Unreal to prototype different ideas.

You'll be joining a team of game developers who all love building and living within the engine!

Responsibilities

• Prototype player combat and movement mechanics.
• Make those mechanics work in multiplayer.
• Partner with art, animation, design, and other engineers to build our game in Unreal Engine 5.
• Write great code and be ready to throw it away if we don’t need it anymore.
• Help make a fantastic game for players who play to bond with friends.
• Help build a studio that you would be proud and excited to invite your friends to work at.

Qualifications

• A minimum of 5 years of experience in software engineering in games.
• Experience with building networked multiplayer games.
• Deep experience with building multiplayer games with Unreal Engine—GAS, Animation, and Replication.

You should join us if

1. You play games to bond with friends. Your most treasured gaming memories are made with friends.
2. You have experience building games from 0→1 and loved that journey.
3. You enjoy brainstorming ideas and bringing those ideas to life with your own hands.
4. You want to craft something new for players and put part of yourself into a game.
5. You are excited to play a major role at an early-stage studio and have the opportunity to shape its direction.

Benefits

• Competitive salary.
• Meaningful equity. This is a founding team role with high ownership and creative control. Success should be shared!
• Medical, dental, vision coverage for you and your family because health is #1.
• Unlimited PTO with company-wide breaks during holidays. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
• Friends who will never judge you during Steam sales.

How we work

We believe small teams with trust, ownership, and empathy can build durable games played by millions. We plan to stay small and nimble (5-7 people) for the early phase, so we can freely explore and find the fun first.

1. We value velocity above all else. But velocity isn’t just about building lots of things quickly, it’s getting to the right things that players actually want.
2. We take personal ownership of the entire player experience, regardless of our role.
3. We are our players. Just listening and understanding them isn’t enough. We have to go one step above and be them (and stay that way).
4. We believe the “right” way to build is the one that serves players and our team the best and not because it’s how we’ve done it in the past.

Our mission

We serve players who game to bond with their friends. Our players are driven by the desire to matter amongst their friends, and they love to make them laugh.

We deeply value building from strong opinions. Great games are built by out-delivering for a specific player. Mediocre games are built by trying to serve everyone.

Here’s a peek at some of the principles that guide us:

1. Unapologetically Multiplayer. Our games are meant to be played with a group. We ask “how can we make it even more fun when with friends?” even if it means sacrificing the solo player experience.
2. Challenging Games > Easy Games. Just like team sports, adversity brings people together.
3. Let Players Be Heroes. We empower individuals to shine or fail spectacularly, making epic stories for their group. The best shared stories are ones where you played a major role.
4. Play Together, Always. The best multiplayer games enable friends to always play together, no matter if they are of different groups, starting times, or duration played.
5. Find the Rhythm. Stories are born from the right rhythm of play—high action moments interspersed with time to digest and make deliberate decisions (we call this the “journey”). It's our job to define a good rhythm for players.