Hi Scouts! As most of you know, it’s been over a year since we first launched Cozy Grove. Since that time, we’ve released dozens of minor updates as well as four major updates, all of which were free, not including the recent New Neighbears DLC which we also released. It would take dozens of pages to summarize all the changes and improvements in those free updates, but here’s a brief summary of some of the bigger items:
NOTE: We are no longer accepting applications for this position.
Spry Fox is looking for a lead engineer, experienced with working in Unity, to help us develop a new cozy game! Note: we intentionally keep our teams as small and as experienced as we can, while sticking to a 40 hour work week and avoiding crunch, because we believe small teams accomplish more and are more pleasant to be a part of. This means that you’ll definitely be rolling up your sleeves and writing code alongside all the other engineers at all times, but you’ll also be sharing your wisdom and helping solve our hardest technical problems on a team-wide basis.
Position requirements. You must:
Have at least five full years of professional game development experience, and preferably more
Experience shipping at least one commercial games using Unity, and preferably more
Be very comfortable working remotely (we’re a virtual studio; everyone works from home!)
Speak and write fluently in English
Live in a US-adjacent timezone or be willing to work from 10am-2pm PST Monday through Thursday
Want to make the world a better place
While not required, it would be nice if you also:
Have any backend (i.e. multiplayer/server) development experience
Have interests outside of game development
Have shipped several games in your professional career
NOTE: We are no longer accepting applications for this position.
We’re looking for a writer who will work alongside our studio’s leadership to flesh out the narrative and write the characters for one of our upcoming nonviolent games. Like Cozy Grove, the story of this new game will be a critical part of what makes it memorable and impactful. And like Cozy Grove, this game will serve a wide audience that includes adults of all ages, and our narrative will not shy away from challenging topics.
For this position, we are requiring that candidates have written for at least one shipped, commercial video game or tabletop game, and preferably more. This is not a junior position.
We welcome candidates from anywhere in the Americas, Europe and Africa (timezone-wise, these locations have proven workable for our studio in the past.) Please note that our studio’s “core hours” are 10am to 2pm Pacific Time, so if you’re based in Europe or Africa, working for several hours during your evening will be a requirement of this position.
NOTE: We are no longer accepting applications for this position.
We’re looking for a designer to help lead the team working on one of our original, cozy games. As a Game Designer at Spry Fox, you will plan, design, iterate and improve the player experience in our games. You’ll create new non-violent activities, events, quests, narrative moments and joyful secrets. You’ll plan new updates and help set the vision for the player’s long-term journey.
For this position, we are requiring 4+ years of professional game design work experience on at least 1 commercially-shipped title. This is not a junior position.
We welcome candidates from anywhere in the Americas, Europe and Africa (timezone-wise, these locations have proven workable for our studio in the past.)
Written by David (aka Chedd)//News//Comments Off on We’re Hiring: 3D Environment Artist
NOTE: This position has been filled. We are no longer hiring.
We’re looking for a Environment Artist who can create vibrant and clean environment assets for a 3rd person, non-violent MMO. You’ll be responsible for creating models and materials for props, buildings, and world assets.
Responsibilities:
Authoring high quality, appealing environment models for use in a procedurally generated and modularly built world
Collaborating with Art Direction to work on cel-shaded, non-PBR assets. A willingness to work with texturing techniques not standard to the industry
Implementing your assets into UE4
Working with Art Lead to help identify necessary workflow and pipeline improvements
Working with designers and developers on a small team to make sure a breadth of content is optimized for performance on multiple platforms
NOTE: This position has been filled. We are no longer hiring.
In Spry Fox, we think of producers first and foremost as people who facilitate communication between other members of the team and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Producers also help identify exciting opportunities that the team might be overlooking as well as dangerous risks that might be going unappreciated. And last but not least, producers help ensure that we’re not dropping any important balls. Great communication and organizational skills, empathy for others, and an ability to remain and to spread calm are all highly appreciated in this position. If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you!
Requirements (mandatory)
You’ve shipped at least one commercial video game as a producer.
Strong communication skills that will help you succeed in a remote team environment.
Well-developed empathy that helps you connect with your peers across disciplines, relate to our customers, and display mature conflict resolution.
You must live within three hours of the Pacific timezone.
Written by David (aka Chedd)//News//Comments Off on We’re Hiring! 3D Character Artist
NOTE: This position has been filled. We are no longer hiring.
We’re looking for a Character Artist who can create vibrant and clean character assets for a 3rd person, non-violent MMO. You’ll be responsible for creating models and materials for player characters, their clothing, wildlife, and creatures for a pro-social, stylized, multiplayer game.
Responsibilities:
Authoring character models for customizable avatars, clothing, NPCs, and creatures both mundane and imaginative
Collaborating with Art Direction to work on cel-shaded, non-PBR assets.
Implementing your asset into UE4.
Working with Art Lead to help identify necessary workflow and pipeline improvements.
Working with Animators and developers on a relatively small team (for an MMO) to make sure that content is optimized for performance on multiple platforms.
We had a few goals for this update: tackle some of the more challenging feature requests that the community has been asking for, add content to some of the systems that we think are currently underutilized in the game, add at least one major new activity, and last but not least, add a special Fall limited-time event!
(Note: if you haven’t already read it, please first read Summer Update #1, which includes lots of important information about new features that we won’t repeat here.)
Hey Scouts! It’s time to tell you more about what you can expect from the Summer Update. Let’s kick this off with yet another entirely new feature:Stone Skipping! (WIP – audio and vfx are still being finalized)
Every day, a limited number of mysterious, open-mouthed clamshells will reveal themselves beyond the shore. Find yourself a nice, flat skipping stone, toss it across the water into the clam, and rewards await you!
Amazingly, these clams are as appreciative of a skillful, many-skip stone toss as we humans, and will more generously reward scouts who manage to sneak in a few extra skips before hitting their target. Different-colored clams give different rewards; some give quartz, some cough up driftwood, and some will reward you with both of those things simultaneously. And on very rare occasion, even better rewards may emerge for a particularly generous clam.
For those of you who’ve unlocked a certain beach-loving character, you’ll be pleased to note that her recurring quest will no longer involve finding skipping stones, and will instead involve actually skipping stones. 😀
Hey, fellow Scouts. It feels like just yesterday that we launched Cozy Grove on all platforms, and yet somehow Summer is almost upon us. And with Summer comes something very exciting – our first major (totally free) update to Cozy Grove! While dishing out bugfixes and QoL improvements, we’ve also been quietly working on a bunch of new content and features for you. We’ll be steadily parceling out most of this new content into Beta in the days ahead, and when we’re about to unveil something in Beta I’ll write a little blog post about it, like this. 🙂
New feature: Critter-catching (WIP)
Warm weather always brings the critters out, right? Summer felt like the perfect time to introduce critter-catching to Cozy Grove. A whole assortment of crawling and flying critters (with seasonal variation, of course) will now populate the item. You can buy a net from Mr. Kit to catch them – like the fishing rod, it will never break, and like fish, critters will spawn semi-continuously. Mr. Kit is fond of critters and will pay a reasonable amount for any that you catch, and some of the bears will express interest in critters from time to time as well. And of course, they’re collectible!
Different critters behave differently, and rarer critters are somewhat harder to catch. Happy hunting!
Written by David (aka Chedd)//News//Comments Off on We’re hiring! Shader Technical Artist
We’re looking for a highly skilled Unreal Shader Technical Artist that can bridge the gap between Art and Engineering. This is a key role in developing the unique artistic style of our game. Extensive knowledge of shading, lighting, rendering, and post processing is required, as well as a strong understanding of the 3D-graphics pipeline and a keen eye for aesthetics and best art practices.
Spry Fox is looking for a 3D Art Lead to help us work on a new, original game — a stylized, joyful and non-violent MMO project!
Our 3d Art Lead will be a key role, bridging the gap between Engineering, Design and Art. We are looking for a talented, multi-disciplinary 3d artist who loves to dive into the organizational and technical side of things, and strives to find systemic and scalable solutions to keep the team moving. You will establish and maintain our art pipelines and processes while helping drive key visuals in the game. You will need to be very comfortable with all the technical and creative aspects of art production.
Spry Fox is looking for a 2D animator to help us work on a new, original game. We expect to have at least six months of full-time work for whoever accepts this position; possibly much more. (more…)
The first Alphabear – a quirky English word puzzle game, for those of you who haven’t played it – was an award-winning and relatively popular game. It has been downloaded well over five million times. Our new sequel is bigger and better in every way. It has a full narrative, several new modes, a new Avatar system (yes, you can finally *be* a bear, not just play with bears), new dictionary tools (featuring Merriam-Webster), greatly enhanced “bear speech”, and more!
We are pleased to announce that Alphabear: Hardcover Edition, the premium version of our award-winning English word puzzle game, is now available on Steam for PCs & Macs. The price is just $9.99 and we’re celebrating the launch with a 10% discount for those who buy it ASAP. 🙂
The original version of Alphabear has been downloaded over four million times and has won numerous awards, including Google’s “Best Indie” award in 2016. This updated version of Alphabear has been enhanced and completely rebalanced. All free-to-play elements have been removed from the game and new features have been added, including:
An in-game dictionary (so you can discover what your more inventive words actually mean!)
A new “prestige” system, for people who complete the campaign and want to replay it at a higher difficulty level to continue challenging themselves.
New random daily boards you can play.
In addition to the Google Play Award, Alphabear is Gamezebo’s best mobile game of 2015, and also received a Game Developers Choice Runner Up award for “Best Mobile Game” in 2015. We’ve been asked by thousands of you for a premium, less-grindy, pay-once version, and we hope this fits the bill!
So what are you waiting for? Visit Steam now to take advantage of our launch discount! Happy bearaphrasing! 🙂
