Hi! We’re Roboto Games—a venture-backed studio led by folks who previously shipped at PopCap and EA, with 10+ years’ experience each and games played by 65M+ players. Our mission: games that are good alone and great together.

Stormforge is a stylized open-world survival crafting game where players craft, build, fight, and harness epic magical storms to survive.

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Combat Technical Animator to own the feel, responsiveness, and in-engine implementation of third-person melee combat and locomotion in Stormforge. We need someone who can take great animations and make them feel incredible in-game.

You will act as the owner of player feel and combat responsiveness and be responsible for implementing and tuning animations directly in Unity. You’ll collaborate closely with engineering, animation, design, audio and VFX to ensure that movement and combat is understandable, responsive and satisfying.

You will be responsible for the quality of the final in-game experience and work with our gameplay animator to guide gameplay animation quality while remaining a strong individual contributor who will integrate and refine all animations.

This role is not focused on animation tools or pipeline development. We are looking for someone deeply focused on in-game feel, combat systems, and real-time implementation.

Areas of Ownership

• Own the final quality and game feel of our player characters and enemies including physically grounded, realistic, and smooth animations for movement, melee and ranged combat. 
• Drive moment-to-moment combat feel including hit timing, anticipation, recovery, and player input responsiveness, ensuring actions feel both powerful and controllable.
• Own the balance between animation fidelity and gameplay responsiveness, including decisions around root motion, blending, and interruptibility. 
• Architect and iterate on our core gameplay animation systems, including all animation state machines, blend trees, and animation events.
• Ensure that collaboration between animation, design, and engineering results in smooth and understandable character and enemy behavior in the final game.
• Ensure that animation, gameplay, audio and VFX all work together as a complete and polished package.

Responsibilities

• Make final calls on animation implementation tradeoffs to achieve the best in-game feel.
• Define required animation coverage and work with the animator to ensure the right clips exist to support responsive gameplay.
• Create and integrate gameplay animations that achieve smooth game feel for player and enemy movement, combat, and interactions.
• Collaborate with the animator and engineers to implement and tune animation systems in Unity to support responsive gameplay.
• Implement and test animations in Unity using Animator Controllers, Blend Trees, Animation Events, and State Machines.
• Work closely with design and engineering to ensure animations feel responsive and satisfying in gameplay.
• Iterate on animation and game feel through playtesting and hands-on tuning.
• Help guide gameplay animation quality across the team through feedback, collaboration, and example.
• Rig and skin characters using autoriggers, mGear and orHive, and maintain animation setups for iteration.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience creating gameplay-focused keyframe animations and controllers with at least one shipped 3rd person melee combat game for PC or console in a senior or lead role.
• Experience with games such as Souls-likes or similar third-person combat systems is highly valued.
• Strong intuition for what makes combat feel “tight” and responsive in modern third-person action games. 
• Strong demo reel demonstrating a deep understanding of animating for 3rd person real-time combat systems (e.g. attacks with combos that flow sequentially, blocks, dodges, and locomotion). 
• Strong understanding of animation fundamentals: weight, timing, posing, anticipation, and how these relate to gameplay control and responsiveness.
• Experience developing gameplay animation for third person melee combat and locomotion gameplay, including considerations for terrain, camera positioning and co-op multiplayer gameplay.
• Experience animating bipedal characters and fantasy, multi-limbed creatures with wings and tails.
• Professional experience using Unity's animation systems (Animator Controllers, Blend Trees, Animation Events, etc.)
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills (fluent in written and spoken English).
• Must be located within 4 hours of Pacific Time for effective remote coordination.
• Self-directed and proactive, but not afraid to ask for help when needed.

Nice to haves

• Comfortable reading simple scripting logic or C# code to understand Unity Animator interactions.
• Familiarity with survival/crafting games, either as a player or developer.

What Success Looks Like

• Players immediately feel that movement and combat are tight, responsive, and intuitive within minutes of play.
• Attacks, dodges, and transitions feel smooth, predictable and readable.
• Animations, VFX, and gameplay are perfectly synchronized.
• Designers and engineers rely on you as the go-to expert for player feel.

Contract Details

• Start: May 2026  End: December 2026 (could be extended)
• 30 - 40 hours per week
• Classification: Independent contractor; monthly invoicing; standard work-for-hire/IP assignment
• Rate: based on experience and location; please include your expected hourly rate
• Location: Remote (anywhere, within 4 hours of Pacific Time)

The Game You’ll be Working on

• Stormforge is an open world survival crafting game where players will craft, build, fight, and harness epic storms to survive in a magical fantasy world
• Premium game, launching on PC Steam
• 3rd person action/adventure game built in Unity
• Real-time multiplayer co-op for 1 to 8 players

How To Apply

Please fill out the form to apply.

We’re excited to meet you!