QUALIFICATIONS: 

• Portfolio showing UI/UX examples (flows, mockups, prototypes)
• Understanding of UI/UX design principles and accessibility basics and their application in games
• Passion for strategy and management games on various platforms
• Fluent English, problem solving mindset, skilled at articulating issues
• Working knowledge of scripting/coding is a plus
• Understanding of AI tools for fast UI prototyping is a plus
• Understanding of player onboarding and readability in complex UIs is a plus
• Understanding of requirements of different control schemes and platforms (PC, console) is a plus
• Passion for video games

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Create UI mockups, user flows, and interactive prototypes
• Build clickable and in-engine prototypes using our UI tools (with support)
• Collaborate with Design/Art/Engineering to align UI with game systems
• Run and synthesize usability tests & playtests; iterate from feedback
• Maintain UI patterns, style guides, and concise documentation
• Prepare assets/specs and follow through to final polish

BENEFITS:

• Working in a creative team with a successful track record
• Become part of the Paradox family – network of established studios that share unique experience
• Healthcare insurance
• Multisport card
• Relaxed working environment

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Clear, concise writing with excellent English (portfolio/samples is a plus)
• Working knowledge of scripting/coding
• Passion for strategy/management games and their deep systems
• Broad, up-to-date gaming literacy (varied genres, current trends)
• Understanding of player onboarding and readability
• Modding experience is a plus
• Understanding of AI tools and their application to content creation is a plus
• Familiarity with localization workflows (string tables, terminology) is a plus

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Write and implement quests, events, characters, tooltips, and tutorials
• Use our proprietary scripting tools to hook content and conditions
• Work with the design team on game balance
• Keep voice, terminology, and style consistent across the game
• Iterate using playtests and feedback

BENEFITS:

• Working in a creative team with a successful track record
• Become part of the Paradox family – network of established studios that share unique experience
• Healthcare insurance
• Multisport card
• Relaxed working environment

This is a full-time position at our office in Sofia.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience with animation in 3DS Max or Blender
• Experience with custom rigs of humans, animals, and environment objects
• Good understanding of animation principles
• Ability to deliver both realistic and stylized animation
• Task driven, self-motivated & proactive
• Experience with max script and expressions is a plus
• Passion for video games and movies

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Create animations for humans, animals, and other objects – with and without using mocap
• Edit mocap data to craft detailed animations
• Create high quality hand-keyed animations
• Participate in preparation and execution of motion capture shoots
• Participate in peer reviews, giving and receiving team feedback
• Follow the established animation style for each game
• Participate in defining the animation style for each game

BENEFITS:

• Working in a creative team with a successful track record
• Become part of the Paradox family – network of established studios that share unique experience
• Healthcare insurance
• Multisport card
• Relaxed working environment
• No overtime

This is a full-time position at our office in Sofia.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Passion for video games
• Familiarity with video games platforms – PC, consoles
• Attention to detail, methodical thinking and striving for perfection
• Good communication skills
• Inquisitive and technical mind
• Understanding of video games development and the role of QA
• Ability to work under pressure
• Good command of English language

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Test our games in every step of development – from prototypes to release versions
• Discover, report and track bugs through issue tracking system
• Support designers, software engineers and artists in implementation of game and engine features
• Make sure our games meet ours, Publishers’ and Platform holders’ technical requirements
• Provide comprehensive feedback on game features

BENEFITS:

• Working in a creative team with a successful track record
• Become part of the Paradox family – network of established studios that share unique experience
• Healthcare insurance
• Multisport card
• Relaxed working environment
• No overtime

This is a full-time position at our office in Sofia.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Passion for video games
• Experience with C++ programming
• Solid written English skills

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Write and debug code in C++ and Lua
• Implement and maintain gameplay features, internal and modding tools, and UI
• Work alongside game designers, artists and QA to ensure flawless player experience

BENEFITS:

• Working in a creative team with a successful track record
• Become part of the Paradox family – network of established studios that share unique experience
• Healthcare insurance
• Multisport card
• Relaxed working environment
• No overtime

This is a full-time position at our office in Sofia.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Passion for video games
• Good knowledge of C++
• Experience working with large codebases and third-party libraries
• Experience with multi-threaded code, system programming, profiling tools
• Real-time rendering experience is an advantage but not required
• Solid written English skills

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Write and debug multi-threaded C++ code on multiple platforms
• Integrate third-party libraries
• Make sure the games conform to strict platform certification requirements
• Work with game teams, QA and external partners on shipping the games on multiple platforms

BENEFITS:

• Working in a creative team with a successful track record
• Become part of the Paradox family – network of established studios that share unique experience
• Healthcare insurance
• Multisport card
• Relaxed working environment
• No overtime

Click here to find out where to pre-order!

New Domes

Curiosity introduces five new Dome types to the game. These are not skins or variants of the old Domes, but entirely new models with new shapes, functionality and costs. With one exception, they do not require new techs to be researched. Each of them is unlocked together with one of the old Domes, potentially by an existing tech. This means that many of them may be directly available even when you load a savegame created before the Curiosity update.

• Micro Dome – a very cheap triangular Dome available at the start. No capability to host a Spire. Can be very useful when space or resources are limited or as an extension to an existing Dome when connected with passages.
• Barrel Dome – an alternative to the Small Dome, available at the start. It provides more usable space but has no capability to host a Spire.
• Trigon Dome – similar to the Medium Dome and made available at the same time. Cheaper to build, but provides less habitable space.
• Mega Trigon Dome – similar to the Large Dome and made available at the same time. Cheaper to build, but provides less habitable space. The triangular shape can be kinda tricky to position on some places of the map with a Dome that big.
• Diamond Dome – this is the only new design that requires a new tech, more specifically a breakthrough, so it will not be available in every playthrough. It is a rhombus-shaped Dome that has the capability to host two spires. We want to keep the “two spire” Dome configurations special and somewhat exclusive but with the new design, we are increasing the chance that you get at least one of the two available configurations during any of your games.

Command Center

The Command Center is a handy new toolset that provides historical data for the colony and the ability to inspect and manage multiple buildings, colonists or vehicles without selecting them individually. It has been developed as part of our effort to reduce the micromanagement and to provide a more informative overview interface for certain gameplay aspects. The Command Center currently offers five different tools:

• Graphs – view historical data for various colony metrics for the last 50 Sols
• Buildings – inspect and manage buildings, work shifts, workers and upgrades
• Domes – inspect and manage Domes and Dome Policies. Check average dome stats, as well as homes and jobs at a glance.
• Colonists – inspect Colonists and compare their stats, traits and interests. Locate problematic colonists quickly.
• Transportation – inspect and manage Drones, Shuttles and Transporters. Check Drone/Shuttle load at a glance and reassign Drones without hunting individual controllers in the normal view

Buildings and Colonists can be filtered by various criteria. If you want to upgrade only some of the extractors in the colony, you can filter out all extractors, quickly check them out in the view on the left side of the screen and upgrade only the ones that you want, all without closing the Command Center. You can use combinations of filters as well – for example, to hunt down all problematic colonists that live in a particular Dome.

The Command Center has been integrated with other existing game interfaces such as the Colony Overview and the Dome Filter – double-clicking a trait in the Dome Filter will open the Center filtering Colonists with this trait in the specified Dome. We plan to keep improving the Command Center and adding new options to it in the future, so any suggestions are welcome. Once the update goes live, please share what kind of information or management tools would you like to see added down the road!

Info Bar

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – I love mods! Not only they empower the players to expand the game and make it cooler, but we can also cherry pick the ideas that we like best and shamelessly add them to the official game.

One such mod that has been particularly popular both with the community and here, at Haemimont Games, is the Info Bar mod, created by Waywocket. We liked Waywockets’ info bar so much that we decided to add an Info Bar of our own to the game. As you can see in the screenshot, our Info Bar shows research progress but is otherwise very similar to the mod that inspired it. Thanks for the great idea, Waywocket, may your nickname live forever in our credits!

Tutorial

Until now I talked about the stuff I love – Domes, Mods and cool management interfaces. Let me tell you about the feature that almost every developer hates – the tutorial. Tutorials are notoriously hard to develop and maintain, and even a very good tutorial is often perceived as some kind of obstacle before the actual game experience. Still, tutorials may be necessary, as we learned the hard way with the launch of Surviving Mars. The feedback of many new players can be summed up by one simple sentence – “How do I play this game?”

Creating a tutorial after release may seem like a waste of effort, but we really want to make our game more welcoming to newcomers and we see this tutorial as very important for the future health of Surviving Mars. So we drew straws and my unlucky colleague Boyan was chosen to design and produce a comprehensive tutorial to be created by a pack of grumpy programmers (like wizards, programmers tend to be grumpy, but the ones working on tutorials are particularly so). Turns out Boyan took “comprehensive” a little too literally, so we now have a huge five-part monster of a tutorial on our hands. He is still recovering from the development of the damn thing, but we are quite happy with the result! It will certainly be helpful to newcomers, even if most of the existing players would never need it.

The original publication here

A “making of” video of the process behind writing the orchestral score for Haemimont Games’ / Paradox Interactive’s’ “Surviving Mars”, composed and conducted by George Strezov. The soundtrack features the fantastic musicians of the Sofia Session Orchestra with solos by Tsvetelina Beleva (alto flute) and Petyo Kolev (flute). The sonic style is a colourful mix between vintage synthesizers and minimalistic, airy orchestral timbres. Video shot by Milen Mladenov, video editing by Bohos Topakbashian.

Via Georgi Strezov