About Forbidden Studios

Forbidden Studios was founded in 2019 by game industry veterans. The company headquarters are located in Turku, Finland, but we largely work remotely, except when working at the office has a clear benefit for working efficiency.

We are an experienced and ambitious group of creatives and tech people crafting wholehearted experiences for PC and consoles in a cozy but sharply functional environment. We may be young as a studio, but our team is comprised of industry veterans and we have a legacy that reaches back beyond the date we were established. We continue building on this legacy without diluting the importance and power of our origins. Our goal is to create meaningful worlds where people want to stay forever.

We are currently developing Among the Trolls, a first-person survival action-adventure game that draws inspiration from Finnish folklore. Among the Trolls will be published by 505 Games, more information at: https://505games.com/games/among-the-trolls/

Feel free to send us an open application. You can reach us at careers@forbidden.dev.

Our Values

In our dealings with players, partners, and each other, we value sincerity – that is to say, honesty and genuineness that comes from the heart – above all else.

Our commitment to professionalism and excellence, both in how we conduct ourselves and in the quality of our work, sets us apart as developers.

Our appreciation for community and our deep consideration of the magic they are capable of brings us together – both in our studio and with our players.

We Offer

• Highly flexible working hours

• Great work-life balance

• An international team of friendly co-workers

• A fridge full of drinks and an unlimited supply of coffee at the Turku headquarters

Employment type: Permanent
Location: Remote (UTC ±0 – UTC +4) or Turku, Finland

The Role

As a graphics programmer in our team, you are dedicated to ensuring that Among the Trolls looks as good as it possibly can. Establishing that the visual game elements look exceptional is at the core of your work tasks. Making the graphics as detailed as possible without sacrificing the speed and playability of the game is of utmost importance. Those who excel at math, rendering, and optimization-related tasks, will stand out from the crowd to us.

We’re an indie game development studio and hardcore PC gamers at heart with a long history of creating groundbreaking games and technology. We know Unity like the back of our hand, and our team members have been part of creating it, expanding it, and pushing the engine to its limits. You will get guidance to learn Unity’s latest tech and how to use it in real-life production and you’ll be working with and learning from some of Unity Game Engine’s original programmers. We are bending the boundaries of what this engine is capable of.

You get to work on
  • Visual effects: rain, aurora borealis, clouds, mystical elements, wind
  • Optimizing large-scale mass rendering for millions of objects
  • Multicore rendering pipelines
  • Terrain rendering
  • Data-oriented programming
  • Making pixels pretty
 
Qualifications
  • One shipped PC or console game made with Unity, or something that will blow our minds
  • Interest in pushing the hardware to its full potential
  • Love for math and designing algorithms
  • Strong C# skills

 

Employment type: Permanent
Location: Remote (UTC ±0 – UTC +4) or Turku, Finland

The Role

As a Network Game Programmer working on Forbidden Studios’ upcoming game Among the Trolls, you’ll make it possible for gamers to play with each other. You’ll develop the code behind the online multiplayer portion of the game so that everything that happens in a game gets transmitted from one machine to another.

Network programming is one of the most complex areas of game planning and you not only need to have an excellent understanding of game programming but also of network protocols and client/server engineering.

Our team members have created multiple online co-op games in the past and will guide you and give you a helping hand when needed. You will be part of a team where you can create meaningful game experiences that players can enjoy together. We give you a supporting environment, where you can focus on what you do best together with a small group of highly-skilled people.

You get to work on
  • Co-op game scripting
  • Solving game design problems that are unique to online co-op games
  • Figuring out how to optimize the network data
  • Game system challenges, e.g. how to hibernate the world state when players are in different locations in an open-world game
 
Qualifications
  • One shipped PC or console game made with Unity, or something that will blow our minds
  • Experience using Photon, Unet, Raknet, or similar
  • Strong C# skills
  • Knowledge of servers and OSI

 

Employment type: Permanent
Location: Remote (UTC ±0 – UTC +4) or Turku, Finland

The Role

As an Open World Game Programmer working on Among the Trolls, you’ll ensure that the streaming-level content works as intended. Working with a finite amount of memory and creating an optimized and immersive experience for players is at the forefront of your work tasks.

Our team has built a foundation for streaming large open worlds that can handle millions of objects in real-time. We’re looking for someone to join us in this effort. You will be solving how to define objects’ position, rotation, and scale in the minimal way possible and how to efficiently present the data and process it in multicore systems.

We will share our knowledge on how to create extremely optimized data structures and process them in Unity’s multicore jobs system.

You get to work on
  • Streaming-level content, like POIs, vegetation, textures, and models
  • Scalable game systems designed for large worlds
  • Long distance tree rendering, LOD systems
  • Hibernating and optimizing game simulation
  • Data-oriented design and multicore programming
 
Qualifications
  • One shipped PC or console game made with Unity, or something that will blow our minds
  • You have experimented with streaming levels or other game content without any loading screens
  • Strong C# skills

 

Employment type: Permanent
Location: Remote (UTC ±0 – UTC +4) or Turku, Finland

The Role

As a Tools Programmer, you make the lives of our game designers, artists, and programmers easier by giving them the best possible tools for the job. To make Among the Trolls the best possible game it can be, it’s necessary to have purpose-built software designed specifically for the creation of the game. As a Tools Programmer, you are responsible for creating and maintaining these tools.

You will work on expanding our in-house tools for creating worlds and building completely new ones. Our team has a long history of creating tools for Unity, and some of these tools are included within Unity itself. If you are on a learning path to becoming a great toolsmith, you will have a grandmaster here at Forbidden Studios to teach you the way.

You will also work together with the programmers, artists, and designers to figure out what tools to build, explain how they should be used, and monitor their effectiveness.

You get to work on
  • Building tools from scratch
  • Expanding Unity Editor
  • Working closely with creatives and thinking about ways to make their life easier.
  • Creating tools for open-world games
 
Qualifications
  • One shipped PC or console game made with Unity, or something that will blow our minds
  • A holistic approach to tools and content creation
  • Experience in designing algorithms
  • Strong C# skills