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Programmers located Anywhere.
Posted by hoonsubin on
Introduction
Hello, internet! My name is Hoon Kim, the lead designer of Team STEP. We are a team of aspiring indie game developers who are working to deliver our first project and start our own indie game studio! Our team is currently looking for a motivated programmer who is willing to learn new things and take on some challenges.
About the project
The project we are working on now is called Witch One.
Witch One is an online asymmetric hide-and-seek style 2D battle-royal game set in a magical fantasy world. The visual style of the game is inspired by classical RPGs with colorful effects, top-down 2D, pixel graphics, tile-based maps, and items scattered throughout the map.
The game can be played with up to 15 players all against each other. The game starts by randomly picking a "Cursed One" who will have to kill another player within the survival time. If the Cursed One kills a player, the curse will move to a different player on the map. Otherwise, the Cursed One will be killed and a new Cursed One will be chosen. This loop is repeated until there is only one player left on the map.
Based on this gameplay loop, the game will have the following mechanics to allow the players to track other players, set up traps, and strategize their movements:
...to name a few.
For more information about Witch One's mechanics and design, please read our game design document which will be linked at the end of this post.
About the team
We, Team STEP, love to have fun, be creative, learn new things, and support each other. Currently, we have five talented and dedicated members with various cultures and backgrounds. Everyone in our team has a full-time job or is a full-time student (or both), so we try to keep the overall workload light and make the schedule flexible as possible. Generally, we have an average workload of 6 hours a week, but because the team is not funded or anything, I like to look at this project as a hobby/passion project/learning opportunity for everyone.
We have a weekly sync meeting through Google Meet to share our weekly progress, next tasks, discussion about game features, or talk about how recent AAA game studios are going to shit. Everything else is communicated through Slack, Notion, and GitHub.
Currently, we have two artists, one programmer, one map designer, and myself (director and developer). Most of our members have working experience in their respective fields and we are more than happy to help each other out. We have members living in the U.S., Brazil, Korea, and Germany, which makes our time zone cover the entire globe!
Although we do not have a regular working schedule or a quota to fill, our team has a strict policy of never ghosting others and always attending the sync meetings. Please note that if a member misses more than two meetings without any prior notice, we consider that member to be no longer interested in the project and will lose their rev-share rights + name on the credits.
Who we are looking for
Currently, we are looking for a programmer with an intermediate level of network architecture and Unity (we're using PUN2 at the moment). In the near future, we will need a full-stack developer who can work with TypeScript + Node.js environment + NOSQL database for game app development (Discord integration, Slack app, RPC server development for third-party apps, game web client, and more).
Our current stack for the core game development is:
Our stack for the rest of our apps are:
I know it seems overwhelming when I list down our project infrastructure, but I promise we are beginner-friendly, given you have intermediate knowledge in programming in general. If you are a programmer who only worked with web development and want to start in game development or vise versa, you came to the right place! Are you a developer who worked on many projects for a long time but never worked together with others before? You're in luck! We have most of the DevOps and CI already in place. We are still learning about effective collaboration practices, and we would love to learn with you!
In short, we are looking for a game developer who is interested in making a multiplayer game in Unity (for example, matchmaking, game lobby, network optimization, and everything related to multiplayer gameplay) or a web developer who is interested in developing game server apps (for example, Discord app that integrates with the project, web clients, RPC server, and everything that is integrated with the game).
We are also looking for UI/Web designers or someone who can work with shaders for programming in-game effects!
But please note that this is a rev-share hobby project, there won't be any upfront payment or commission for members of the team before launch. Instead, we will equally split the monthly revenue (before tax and expense) generated by the project after its official full launch. Every project-related expense (server hosting costs, domain costs, paid service costs, paid assets, etc.) will be paid by me. In other words, team members will not be asked to spend their money as we only ask for your valuable time and skill for the project.
However, we aim to incorporate Team STEP as a proper indie game studio starting with Witch One, which means the rev-share agreement will be limited to project Witch One. If we successfully incorporate Team STEP with capital injection, everyone in the team will discuss the compensation method again (for example, changing to a full-time contract or keeping the rev-share agreement) before finalizing so that everyone is in an agreement.
Thank you so much for reading this long post!
Links and resources
So are you interested in working with us on our project? Maybe you want to learn more about the project or our team? Or would you like to support our project with a friendly message? You can reach out to me via email (mail@hoonkim.me) or Discord (Hoon Kim#1643). Our team will be very happy to hear from you! If you wish to join our team, it would be very helpful if you can write a short description, your motivation, your time zone, and your portfolio in your message.