The Chinese Room has established a reputation as one of the most creative and exciting studios in the UK. We’re proud to be internationally recognised as pioneers of storytelling with a flair for creating atmospheric, rich and imaginative games.

As a Sumo Digital studio, The Chinese Room is built on passion, on finding amazing people and letting them shine. It’s an exciting time to be part of Sumo, winners of the Develop: Star Awards 2019 Best Studio and GI Biz 2020 Best Places to Work; big things are on the horizon and we want you to be part of our continued journey. Join us!

The Chinese Room is made up of a diverse mix of fantastic people, although sometimes, some groups are still under-represented. We are working to remove obstacles that can make it difficult for those groups to progress their careers in the games industry. We welcome applications from under-represented people in the gaming industry, including, but not limited to BAME, LGBQT+, women, people with physical disabilities, neurodiversity or mental health issues, and parents or carers.

The role @ The Chinese Room

The Chinese Room is looking to expand our core teams experience and has a fantastic opportunity for a VFX artist.

As a candidate you must be passionate about all aspects of VFX design and implementation, with the ability to create dazzling effects, within technical restrictions and that aid in gameplay immersion.

The ideal candidate will have a history of demonstrating an exceptional eye for detail, creative flair, stylistic versatility and the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate on artistic and technical aspects with other team disciplines.

If you can produce VFX from the magical to the mundane, from the stylistic to the realistic, from the current gen to the next gen, we have the right team, the right opportunity and a wide variety of game genres for you to work in.

Within this role you will:

Use your command over aesthetics and physics to create real world VFX;
Collaborate with designers, artists and coders to design and implement those VFX;
Take ownership and responsibility of your output;
Willingness to muck-in, and will support other team members;
Optimize your VFX to budget, test, measure and strive to improve performance;
Contribute to new techniques and workflows;
Work under direction to create stunning VFX, optimised per platform, across multiple titles
Create protoypes and pre-visualisation concepts to help establish visual effects direction and workflows
Collaborate with level design and gameplay teams to create visual effects that support gameplay requirements
Be up to date on current and emerging visual effect trends and technology
Create clear and accurate technical documentation regarding VFX production and implementation procedures
Work with the Graphical Rendering team/Technical Art team in the development and improvement of workflows and technologies to improve visual effect quality and performance.
Work through all aspects of the VFX pipeline, which includes creating content from concept to final polished result

We need you to have:

A minimum of 2 years’ experience in VFX
Expert understanding of real-time VFX authoring tools
Experience with 3D packages for creating 3D assets
Strong knowledge of Photoshop and After Effects
Strong and demonstrable understanding of the Principles of Real Time VFX
Understanding of VFX impact on console performance
Highly passionate and self-motivated to create high quality VFX
The ability to work with various styles of art on multiple projects
Demo reel required
Experience with UE4 (Cascade and Niagara)

We'd also ideally like you to have (although it's not a deal-breaker):

Very strong problem-solving skills for technically challenging tasks
Experience in Unity (Shuriken), PopcornFX and other game engines for creating real time VFX
Experience with fluid dynamics simulation software, such as Houdini and FumeFX, for fire, smoke, fluid and soft/rigid body dynamics

Our titles include the ground-breaking Dear Esther (2012), cult horror Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013), the VR fairy-tale So Let Us Melt (2017) and the open-world adventure Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015), a PlayStation 4 exclusive that won major awards across the world. This included an amazing 10 BAFTA nominations and 3 BAFTA wins.

We bring our passion and commitment to creating exciting original games to a network of studios renowned for quality and expertise. Being part of the Sumo team enables us to expand and grow in ambition and confidence, taking our reputation for storytelling into new genres. Our most recently announced game, Little Orpheus, is an Apple Arcade exclusive and we’re working on other unannounced ‘AAA’ titles that will further establish our award-winning style and reputation.

We offer a superb benefits package including generous holidays and flexi-time. We care about our people, with an emphasis on the work/life balance and out of office events such as our legendary Sumo ‘Big Day Out’, plus epic Christmas parties and much more! Our regular studio Game Jams are a highlight - winning concepts can go on to commercial release, so far including Snake Pass and the upcoming Spyder for Apple Arcade.

The Chinese Room is located in Brighton in the south of England, home to an amazingly vibrant game development scene and a cultural hotspot with fantastic food, arts, music, shopping and sports. The studio is in the city centre, near the beach, and close to the South Downs National Park. Gatwick Airport is only half an hour away from train, and you can be in central London in just over an hour. It’s an easy place to love!

Our environment is relaxed, friendly and built upon the basis of every team member having the opportunity to shine and have a realisable input into the games we create. We’re in the amazing position of building a brand-new team, and creating a studio culture that’s all about passion, respect, diversity, fun and togetherness. We’re looking for people that love what they do and love to share their enthusiasm with each other.