Twisted Works
Senior Gameplay Programmer (Contract)
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Contract: Initial 12-week contract with potential extension. Total engagement expected to remain under six months.
About Twisted Works
We are an independent game studio based in London, creating original games for PC and Console with a focus on online co-op experiences.
Founded in 2024 by veteran developers from PlayStation London, Guerrilla Cambridge, Creative Assembly, Disney Interactive, Square Enix and more. Our collective credits include Horizon Forbidden West, Blood & Truth, Resident Evil 7, Killzone, Total War, Middle-earth: Shadow of War and many others.
Our debut title, Cast Outs, is a co-op action game set in a reimagined modern fantasy London. It reflects the kind of games we make. Replayable experiences built around strong core gameplay, meaningful co-op, and memorable moments between players and friends.
This role is for a separate project currently in an early prototype stage.
About the Role
We are looking for a senior, hands-on Gameplay Programmer to help build a prototype for a new 2-4 player co-op action game in Unreal Engine.
You will work directly with our team and partners to translate gameplay hypotheses, design ideas and intended player behaviours into testable systems, then rapidly iterate, simplify or discard them based on what we learn through playtesting.
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The objective is not to build final production architecture or simply implement a fixed feature list. It is to build the smallest, strongest version of the game that proves whether the core gameplay is fun, understandable and worth taking forward.
If the project progresses successfully toward full production, there may be opportunities to continue working with the team beyond the initial engagement.
What You Will Work On
- Translate gameplay hypotheses and design ideas into testable implementations, then rapidly iterate, simplify or discard systems based on playtesting
- Player locomotion, movement states, and third-person controls
- Ranged combat, targeting, damage and knockback
- Health, downed, revive, death and recovery states
- Contextual interactions including carrying, repairing, switches and other world interactions
- Two to four player networked gameplay, replicated interactions and shared gameplay state
- Cooperative gameplay systems including proximity, shared objectives and resource management
- Environmental hazards, progression blockers and cooperative puzzles
- Route and objective logic
- Enemy AI including movement, targeting, behaviour priorities and interactions with players and objectives
- Multiplayer AI behaviour and replication
- Multiplayer session flow including lobbies, game start, success, failure and restart states
- Gameplay debugging, profiling, optimisation and iteration through playtesting
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What We Need
- Strong professional Unreal Engine experience
- Strong C++ gameplay programming skills
- Practical experience implementing networked multiplayer gameplay
- Strong understanding of Unreal replication, RPCs, authority and ownership
- Comfortable working across C++ and Blueprint
- Experience building tuneable gameplay systems
- Experience working directly with designers
- Ability to prototype quickly and iterate through playtesting
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills
- Comfortable taking ownership of features from design intent through to playable implementation
Most importantly, we need someone who has personally built gameplay that works across a networked multiplayer session.
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