Illustrator/Concept Artist — Contract

We're looking for a 2D artist that's up for dreaming about a weird sci-fi universe! You'll be the first step in making the team's visual dreams a reality by developing concepts and illustrating the most important elements of the game.

We don't currently have any 2D artists; you'll be filling an important gap in our team's skillset.

Our immediate goal is turning our game's prototype into a demo suitable to show at gamescom 2024 in late August. As part of that, we need a 2D artist to create key art, posters, and concept the most important elements of the demo.

If gamescom is successful, we plan to take the game into production. At that point, it's full steam ahead!

Important details

• Compensation: $25/hr - $30/hr USD
• Contract length: 3 months
• Fully remote: our team spans the globe!

What you'll be doing

• Illustrate the world of our upcoming game, MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80
• Create key art and marketing pieces for the game
• Design art for the game's world: game UI, ficticious company branding, in-game signage
• Work with the team to concept and ideate the things that make up the game:
  • Props: building parts, accessories, tools, environment clutter
  • Characters: the player, scary alien monsters, industrial robots

Qualifications

• Experience working as a concept artist or illustrator
• Ability to illustrate a variety of subjects: people, monsters, industrial machines
• Bonus: Experience doing UI design for games or other industries
• Bonus: Experience as a story artist

The Game: MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80

MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80 is a game about being stranded far from home in an alien star system full of junk. Taking advantage of an extensive physics sandbox and third person action-shooter gameplay, the player must build janky equipment out of random parts to survive and escape SECTOR 80.

The game is in pre-production and most core mechanics are playable. We've built the game in an in-house engine using fairly cutting edge technology (ECS, the Rust programming language, wgpu) to help meet the game's goals.

Real-life physics are a core feature of the game and its simulation. Whenever practical, we use approximations of real phenomenons, including for our renderer and physics sandbox. This grants the game a lot of inherent depth but comes with unique technical and design challenges.

Pillars of the Game

Avoid the Big-Empty-Space-Game Problem

Many open-ended space games end up empty and devoid of interesting stuff to do. It's more important that we have a dense, interesting playspace than a large one.

Having a handcrafted environment also enables us to tell human stories about who might’ve lived in this place and why it's shaped the way it is.

Emergent Gameplay through Systems

Many of my favorite games have their best gameplay emerge from simple systems interacting. By layering interesting systems together, we can create complexity and fun organically.

Engineering is Fun

We're heavily inspired by games like Kerbal Space Program and Oxygen Not Included that teach players orbital dynamics and thermodynamics, but are still fun games.

The Studio

Collaboration is Key

Games are a product of who makes them. We want every team member to be able to express themselves in the games we make.

Handcrafted by Humans

The human element is what makes games great! We are staunchly anti-AI.

No Crunch, Low Stress

We're here to create games that bring joy, but that can't come at the cost of burning ourselves out.