Hi! We’re Roboto Games—a venture-backed studio led by folks who previously shipped at PopCap and EA, with 10+ years’ experience each and games played by 65M+ players. Our mission: games that are good alone and great together.

Stormforge is a stylized open-world survival crafting game where players craft, build, fight, and harness epic magical storms to survive.

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Enemy Combat Animator to own the feel, responsiveness, and in-engine implementation of third-person enemy combat animations and locomotion in Stormforge. We need someone who can make great animations and make them feel incredible in-engine.

You will act as the owner of enemy animations including taking responsibility for their in-engine game feel and combat responsiveness and be responsible for implementing and tuning animations directly in Unity. You’ll collaborate closely with engineering, design, audio and VFX to ensure that movement and combat is understandable, responsive and satisfying.

You will be responsible for the quality of the final in-game experience of enemies and work with a combat gameplay engineer to achieve great gameplay animation quality while remaining a strong individual contributor who will integrate and refine all animations.

Areas of Ownership

• Own the final quality and game feel of our enemies including physically grounded, realistic, and smooth animations for movement, melee and ranged combat. 
• Drive moment-to-moment combat feel of our enemies including hit timing, anticipation, and recovery; ensuring actions feel both powerful and controllable.
• Own the balance between animation fidelity and gameplay responsiveness, including decisions around root motion, blending, and interruptibility. 
• Ensure that collaboration between animation, design, and engineering results in smooth and understandable character and enemy behavior in the final game.
• Ensure that animation, gameplay, audio and VFX all work together as a complete and polished package.

Responsibilities

• Create high-quality keyframe animations for enemies, especially focused on combat, locomotion, and traversal
• Make final calls on animation implementation tradeoffs to achieve the best in-game feel.
• Define required animation coverage to ensure the right clips exist to support responsive gameplay.
• Implement and test animations in Unity using Animator Controllers, Blend Trees, Animation Events, and State Machines.
• Take ownership of existing animations created in Maya, and iterate or polish as needed.
• Work closely with design and engineering to ensure animations feel responsive and satisfying in gameplay.
• Collaborate with the broader 3D team to support areas like modeling, texturing, or lighting as needed.
• Assist in producing marketing assets (short clips, trailers, etc.) using in-game animation footage.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience creating gameplay-focused keyframe animations with at least one shipped 3rd person melee combat game for PC or console in a senior or lead role.
• Experience with games such as Souls-likes or similar third-person combat systems is highly valued.
• Strong demo reel demonstrating a deep understanding of animating for 3rd person real-time combat systems (e.g. attacks with combos that flow sequentially, blocks, dodges, and locomotion). 
• Portfolio and Demo Reels without gameplay in-context will not be considered. Reels must demonstrate enemy locomotion and melee combat with a 3rd person camera perspective.
• Strong understanding of animation fundamentals: weight, timing, posing, anticipation, and how these relate to gameplay control and responsiveness.
• Experience animating bipedal characters and fantasy, multi-limbed creatures with wings and tails.
• Professional experience using Unity's animation systems (Animator Controllers, Blend Trees, Animation Events, etc.)
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills (fluent in written and spoken English).
• Must be located within 4 hours of Pacific Time for effective remote coordination.
• Self-directed and proactive, but not afraid to ask for help when needed.

Nice to haves

• Experience with other areas of game development such as VFX, or modeling
• Comfort reading simple scripting logic or C# code to understand Unity Animator interactions
• Familiarity with survival/crafting games as a player or developer
• Experience creating and editing animation content for marketing (GIFs, trailers, gameplay clips)

Contract Details

• Start: June 2026  End: December 2026 (could be extended)
• 30 - 40 hours per week
• Classification: Independent contractor; monthly invoicing; standard work-for-hire/IP assignment
• Rate: based on experience and location; please include your expected hourly rate
• Location: Remote (anywhere, within 4 hours of Pacific Time)

The Game You’ll be Working on

• Stormforge is an open world survival crafting game where players will craft, build, fight, and harness epic storms to survive in a magical fantasy world
• Premium game, launching on PC Steam
• 3rd person action/adventure game built in Unity
• Real-time multiplayer co-op for 1 to 8 players

How To Apply

Please fill out the form to apply.

We’re excited to meet you!