About the role
Role Overview
Help craft the moment to moment magic of a new King Game. Join our New Games Studio and help build the next generation of King experiences. We are developing a new casual puzzle game and are seeking a Principal Game Designer to shape the feel, challenge, and moment to moment fun of the game. You will design and evolve core puzzle gameplay, including level mechanics, blockers, moment to moment interaction systems, and overall difficulty progression. Working with project leadership, you will craft gameplay that is satisfying, approachable, and scalable across thousands of levels, ensuring strong long-term engagement.
Responsibilities
- Design and iterate on the core puzzle gameplay, ensuring the moment-to-moment interaction feels satisfying, responsive, and accessible.
- Create and evolve blockers and level mechanics, developing gameplay elements that introduce challenge, variety, and strategic depth.
- Help define the overall gameplay feel, including pacing, readability, clarity, and player feedback.
- Collaborate with the design leadership team to ensure blockers and mechanics integrate well into the wider level progression.
- Partner with Product Managers and Data Scientists to analyse player behaviour and tune gameplay difficulty, progression, and engagement.
- Prototype and develop new gameplay mechanics, exploring ideas that enhance the puzzle experience and expand the game’s design space.
- Ensure gameplay systems align with the game’s broader meta and economy systems, working with systems and economy designers when necessary.
- Maintain high standards of design quality, balancing creative ambition with technical constraints and production realities.
- Document and clearly communicate gameplay designs, ensuring teams across disciplines understand design goals and player outcomes.
- Identify and communicate design risks early, working closely with producers and engineers to ensure smooth delivery.
- Stay connected to the market, analysing puzzle and casual games to identify emerging trends and opportunities.
- Contribute to the studio’s design craft community, sharing learnings and supporting the growth of fellow designers.
Skills and Qualifications
- Experience working on mobile games, particularly free-to-play titles.
- Strong passion for casual mobile games and meta game design.
- Proven experience designing meta systems, progression frameworks, or long-term engagement mechanics in successful games.
- Strong understanding of player motivation, progression design, and long-term engagement loops.
- Experience designing systems that connect gameplay with progression, rewards, and feature unlocks.
- Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret player behaviour and data insights to guide iteration.
- Experience collaborating within multidisciplinary teams, balancing creative, technical, and product perspectives.
- Strong organisational skills with the ability to drive features from concept through delivery.
- Clear and effective communicator verbally, visually, and in written documentation.
- Comfortable working in fast-moving development environments where systems evolve through iteration.
- Experience working on Sorting, Match Pair, or Match 3D mechanics is especially valuable.
Company Culture and Context
King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world with more than 20 years of history. We blend intuition with analysis, art with science, and imagination with execution to craft games. We operate with a mission to bring moments of magic to everyday life and are committed to creating a workplace that values diversity and originality. King is part of Microsoft and maintains studios in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Malta.