Freelance Game Designer - Lively, UK

At Lively, we pride ourselves on making games full of character. The world is fun and silly and sad and infuriating and banal and beautiful and ugly, and all of those things have a place in our games.

Lively hunger for difference, we celebrate it, support it, and thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, products, and community. Lively is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

About the Role
We're looking for a Game Designer to hire for our small team building a cosy game for a mobile-first subscription platform. As we are fresh out of prototyping, we’re looking for a designer that can build momentum in establishing content pacing, refine our player UX, and helping to build out secondary features that create depth for the game experience.
This is an ownership-driven role. You'll receive high-level direction from our Lead Game Designer and run with it, driving features and content from initial concept through to implementation and balance, without needing your work broken down for you. If you thrive when given space to think deeply and want a high-impact role, this is the team for you

What We're Looking For
Required:

• 3-6+ years of game design experience, with at least one shipped title
  
• Hands-on comfort working in Unity
  
• Above average creative writing skills evidenced in portfolio work or in-game content
  
• Familiarity with mobile control paradigms and platform requirements—you design with touch-first interactions and mobile constraints in mind
  
• Demonstrable passion for player experience and player-facing feature development
  
• Ability to operate with high-level direction and self-manage execution without task-level guidance
  
• Work examples that show range across design, writing, and implementation
  
• Experience working on and/or a deep affinity for cosy, narrative-driven, and life-sim games
  
• Experience with game balancing: economy, progression, and difficulty tuning
  
• Familiarity with UX best practices for games and player-facing messaging
  

You Might Be a Great Fit If...

• Experience with narrative design, tools, and handling complex content requirements
  
• Experience in UX design or player research
  
• Shipped mobile titles
  
• Your games library is full of titles like Stardew Valley, Spiritfarer, Pokopia, and Animal Crossing
  
• You write the way you design. Clearly, intentionally, and with the player in mind
  
• You get genuinely excited about balancing spreadsheets and narrative beats in the same afternoon