Rivac LabsGame Designer
A game designer turns a pitch or a pile of half-built mechanics into a documented, playable system: the core loop, the win/loss conditions, the pacing curve, and the numbers that make it fun instead of just functional. Studios usually need this when a project has good art or good tech but nobody can articulate why a player would come back tomorrow, or when three team members are building three different versions of the same feature because there's no shared design document to point to. We write the GDD your engineers and artists actually use, not one that sits in a drive folder, and we balance the underlying economy and difficulty curve against real playtest data instead of gut feel. The output is a design that's specific enough to build against and honest enough to flag what it doesn't yet answer.
How We’d Approach This
A clear, staged plan — not a black box
- 1
Play the current build (or read the pitch) and name the one loop that has to work before anything else does.
- 2
Prototype that core loop in the cheapest possible form — paper, a whiteboard economy, or a grey-box level — and test it with real players before writing a full GDD.
- 3
Turn validated mechanics into a working design document with rules, numbers, and open questions flagged as open, reviewed with your team before it's treated as final.
- 4
Stay attached through production to tune balance against real playtest and telemetry data as the build changes.
What You Get
Deliverables from this engagement
- A living game design document your team can actually build from
- A tuned core-loop prototype validated with real players
- An economy/balancing model (spreadsheet or in-engine tool) with the math shown
- A prioritized feature backlog tied back to the core loop
Six Ways We Could Architect This
Different engagement, different build — pick the shape that fits
There’s more than one way to deliver on this service. Browse a few of the ways we’d structure the work, depending on your speed, budget, and integration needs.
Ready to get started?
Tell us what you’re trying to get done and we’ll help you find the highest-leverage place to start — scoped small enough to prove itself before you commit to anything bigger.
Talk to us about Game Designer