Game Designer (Remote)

About Us
At Happy Lemon Games, we create mobile hypercasual and casual titles that are simple to pick up and deeply satisfying to master. We care about clarity, pacing, and that crisp game feel that makes every tap delightful-without overcomplicating the experience.
The Opportunity
We're looking for a Game Designer who can define what the game is: what the player does, where things live on screen, how sessions flow, how difficulty ramps, and why the experience feels great. Hands-on Unity skills are a plus. Your superpower is shaping readable, juicy, mobile-first play from concept to soft launch and beyond.
What You'll Do
Define core loops & goals: articulate the player verbs, success/fail states, and short/long-term motivation.
Own moment-to-moment feel (design-side): specify timing, feedback layers (FX/SFX/haptics), hitstop/anticipation usage, and readability rules.
Design flows & onboarding (FTUE): map session structure, difficulty curves, level progression, and retention beats (D1/D7).
Create clear documentation: concise design specs, wireframes, user flows, tuning sheets, and content guidelines that teams can execute against.
Place & pace content: define level archetypes, obstacles/hazards, spawn logic, rewards, and meta-progression (where applicable).
Run playtests: plan tests, collect qualitative notes and simple metrics; translate insights into actionable changes.
Collaborate cross-functionally: partner with Product, Art, Audio, and Engineering to ensure designs ship as intended and feel great on device.
Balance and iterate: own difficulty tuning, economy pacing (if present), and clarity passes through soft launch/live ops.
Watch the market: track hypercasual/casual trends, input paradigms, and UX patterns; bring competitive learnings to pitches.
What We're Looking For
Proven experience designing mobile hypercasual/casual gameplay (launched titles or strong prototypes/level packs).
Sharp sense for clarity, pacing, and player feedback (anticipation, squash & stretch, coyote time, easing-at a directive/spec level).
Ability to build clean, brief specs and tuning sheets that speed up production.
Strength in level/obstacle design, difficulty ramping, and session structuring.
Comfortable with playtesting and iteration using both qualitative feedback and lightweight KPI reads.
Excellent communication in a remote, cross-disciplinary team.
A genuine passion for simple, satisfying mobile play.
Nice to Have (Not Required)
Familiarity with Unity sufficient to speak the team's language and review builds.
Experience with light economy design, live-ops events, and A/B testing.
Basic data literacy (reading funnels, retention, and feature engagement).
Why Join Happy Lemon Games?
Remote-first: work from anywhere with flexible hours.
High impact: small, focused team shipping fast.
Player-first craft: ship games that feel great and respect players' time.
Growth: own features end-to-end across pitches, soft launch, and live ops.