About the role
This position has been closed or filled.
About the Project
When an ancient orb shatters over a tropical archipelago, a young apprentice recovers a fallen shard and begins uncovering its secrets — master your class, battle through dungeons and raid bosses, and collect the remaining shards before a rogue sorceress finds them first, all in a single-player world that lives like an MMO.
Where We Are
The project is currently in pre-production. The world, themes, and high-level story beats are defined. Current focus is shaping detailed lore, narrative breakdown, and dialogue. The role involves establishing quest frameworks, storytelling conventions, and lore foundations.
About the Role
The position is a hybrid Narrative + Quest Designer serving as the right hand of the Narrative Director. Responsibilities include owning quests from pitch to final polish, writing story beats, dialogue, and lore, and building structure, pacing, and gameplay logic. The designer will translate the vision of what the story is into how players experience it.
What You'll Do
- Design, write, and implement quests end-to-end in Unity: concept, narrative outline, dialogue, objectives, and branching logic.
- Write compelling dialogue, barks, item descriptions, spellbook entries, and other in-game text that fits the game's tone and world.
- Work directly with the Narrative Director as their deputy: translate high-level story vision into quest structures, gameplay beats, and implementable content, and maintain narrative consistency across the game.
- Partner with level designers, systems designers, and engineers to ensure quests integrate cleanly with gameplay mechanics, world layout, and progression.
- Build and maintain quest flow documentation, branching diagrams, and dialogue trees.
- Balance quest rewards and pacing in coordination with the systems team.
- Champion player agency: design meaningful choices with consequences that ripple through the story and world.
What We're Looking For
- 3+ years of experience in narrative design, quest design, or a combined role, with at least one shipped title (or a substantial released project).
- Solid Unity experience: hands-on implementation of narrative/quest content using tools like Timeline, ScriptableObjects, and dialogue systems (custom or asset-store based).
- Strong writing craft: dialogue that sounds human, economy of words, and a firm grasp of tone, character voice, and subtext.
- Proven quest design skills: pacing, objective clarity, branching structures, fail states, and reward loops.
- Comfort with nonlinear structures: branching narratives, reactive world states, and systemic storytelling.
- Ability to receive, give, and act on feedback with a collaborative, low-ego attitude.
- Excellent documentation and communication skills.
Nice to Have
- Experience with Unity-friendly dialogue/narrative middleware (Ink + Unity integration, Yarn Spinner, Dialogue System for Unity, articy:draft).
- Comfort digging into how systems work under the hood — light scripting or C# literacy is a plus.
- Background in RPGs, open-world, or story-driven games.
- Localization-aware writing experience.
- Familiarity with cinematics and voice-over pipelines.
What to Expect
- Hours: Part-time; Contract (est. 5-15 hours per week).
- Rate: $50-75/hour.
- Schedule: Fully remote and largely asynchronous.
- Communication: Work primarily through written channels; clear async communication is required.
How to Apply
Send a resume/CV along with a portfolio showing both sides of the craft: writing samples (dialogue, quest text) and quest design documentation (flowcharts, design docs, or a video sample).
- Required: Include a sample quest design and dialogue tree, accompanied by a written explanation of the process — what didn't work, what did, and why.