Lead Game Designer

Location: Berlin, Germany
Contract type: On-Payroll, Full-time (40h/week), fixed-term contract (with a strong possibility of extension or conversion to permanent employment based on performance and project requirements)
Expected Start Date: 01.11.2026

The Lead Game Designer is responsible for the overall game design vision of The Conformist. This role owns the coherence of player-facing systems and mechanics, leads the design function across disciplines, and ensures that gameplay systems reinforce the project’s themes, narrative structure, and pacing. The Lead Game Designer works closely with narrative, technical, production, and QA leadership to deliver a cohesive and strategically engaging experience.

Responsibilities

• Digest and evolve the overall game design vision and ideas for The Conformist, ensuring a cohesive experience across all player-facing systems and content.

• Lead and coordinate all design disciplines, aligning systems design, quest design, progression, UX-facing gameplay flows, and content structure under a unified direction.

• Ensure the RPG and life-simulation layers, including propaganda, team management, and campaign systems, reinforce each other and support the story’s themes and pacing.

• Partner closely with Narrative leadership, including the Lead Writer and Senior Narrative Designer, to integrate writing, quest structures, and branching outcomes with systemic design and reactivity.

• Partner closely with the Lead Programmer to align design intent with technical architecture, feasibility, data structures, and implementation strategy.

• Partner closely with the Lead Artist to ensure gameplay systems, UX flows, and presentation support visual clarity, tone, and player readability.

• Drive experimentation and rapid iteration through prototypes, playtests, and design spikes to validate assumptions and reduce production risk.

• Define core gameplay loops, progression frameworks, and balance targets to maintain a readable, strategically engaging, and coherent experience over time.

• Set design standards and processes, including documentation expectations, review routines, and decision-making clarity across the design function.

• Collaborate with Production and QA to plan testing cycles, prioritize issues, and maintain milestone readiness and quality thresholds.

• Maintain high-level design documentation and cross-team visibility using Miro, Notion, and Codecks, ensuring design decisions, rules, and interfaces remain current and accessible.

Requirements

Essential qualifications

• Extensive experience as a game designer, with prior leadership or lead-level responsibility on complex game projects.

• Strong understanding of systemic design, progression, and player decision-making in narrative-driven or strategy, simulation-heavy games.

• Proven ability to define and communicate a cohesive design vision across multiple interconnected systems.

• Experience leading and coordinating other designers, including review, feedback, and alignment processes.

• Strong collaboration skills across narrative, programming, art, production, and QA.

• Ability to balance creative ambition with technical and production constraints.

• High level of organization and comfort maintaining design documentation and decision records.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience working on politically themed, strategy, or life-simulation games.

• Familiarity with long-term progression systems and RPG state-driven gameplay.

• Experience developing complex, interdependent systems across multi-year productions.

• Shipped games that involved multiple genre or blended design systems.

• Experience working within narrative-heavy projects with strong thematic intent.

Benefits

• Health & Wellbeing: Free Urban Sports Club membership (Berlin employees).
• Transport: Fully covered Deutschland-Ticket (Berlin employees).
• Flexible Hours: Start your day between 8:00 and 10:00 CET, with core working hours from 10:00 to 15:00 CET.
• Hybrid Work: Work 3 days in the office and 2 days remotely (Berlin employees).
• Work from Abroad: Up to 10 remote working days per year outside Germany (employees).
• Team Events: Regular team events and access to the NLND community network.
• Feedback & Growth: Regular feedback and development sessions.
• Annual Bonus: Performance-based bonus.
• Vacation: 24 paid vacation days per year (full-time employees).

Salary

Minimum: 50000
Maximum: 60000
Currency: EUR
Pay period: Annual