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You will be joining the Lost Gate Studios team as a UX/UI Designer. The Lost Gate Studios team values developers who bring both passion and self-awareness to their discipline. A nourishing game dev experience is built on clear communication, mutual respect, and the creative drive to solve problems in innovative ways. Each team member understand their strengths, acknowledge areas for growth, and work collaboratively to push the boundaries of what's possible in collaborating with each other to make MINDFLUX: Dead Man Walking.

UX/UI Designer

The Project

MINDFLUX: Dead Man Walking is a psychological-horror RPG where you play as Ambrose, a Cerebroid detective investigating a murder while uncovering your forgotten past. Set in a "scrap-punk" dystopia, players will modify their mechanized brain, observe suspects, and make tactical dialogue choices that impact both the investigation and their own deteriorating mental stability.

The Companies

Salix Augeat is a video game production company focused on making the industry accessible to growing game devs through recruitment, production, and publishing services. Lost Gate Studios, our first internal studio, consists of 11 remote team members united by their belief that mind-bending roleplaying games expose fundamental truths about humanity.

The Job

Wireframe game UI based on feature’s design goals and gameplay loop.
Conduct UX tests to discover optimal UX flow for players for each front facing feature.
Create UI art in-line with established UI art style.
Implement UI art and build technologies in Unity to support UX/UI designs.
Own the UX to UI pipeline from wireframing to UI art to implementation.

The Incentives

Pay Rate: $20 per hour
Hours Cap: 20 hrs a week
Creative freedom to influence the final product
Portfolio building with no content NDA (Leads Approval Required)
Real game development experience with an 11-person team
Credits on a shipped, market-validated project (1000+ Steam wishlists)

The Timeline

October 2025: Attended DreamHack Atlanta 2025, & Won 5 Awards, including 1st in Design & 1st in Production
May 2026: Attending DreamHack Atlanta 2026, & Overhauled Game Introduction
September 2026: Attend Pax West 2026, & Updated Steam Demo

You will be joining the Lost Gate Studios team as a UX/UI Developer. The Lost Gate Studios team values developers who bring both passion and self-awareness to their discipline. A nourishing game dev experience is built on clear communication, mutual respect, and the creative drive to solve problems in innovative ways. Each team member understands their strengths, acknowledge areas for growth, and work collaboratively to push the boundaries of what's possible in collaborating with each other to make MINDFLUX: Dead Man Walking.

Wireframe game UI based on feature’s design goals and gameplay loop.
Conduct UX tests to discover optimal UX flow for players for each front facing feature.
Work with the Creative Director and other team members to establish a cohesive UI art style.
Create UI art in-line with established UI art style.
Implement UI art and build technologies in Unity to support UX/UI designs.
Iterate on implemented UI based on internal or external feedback.
Produce UI design concepts in conjunction with other designers.
Implement UI assets in conjunction with other developers and designers.
Collaborate with other developers to create a cohesive game product.
Own the UX to UI pipeline from wireframing to UI art to implementation.
Upload, maintain, and organize UI files within our file repository.
Maintain consistent and direct communication with other members of the dev team, responding to internal correspondence within a timely manner.
Develop content in line with the company’s mission/vision/values and project mission/vision/values.
Contribute to the growing culture of an indie video game startup.

You are joining the project in our 3rd year of development. Our Release time window is estimated to be October 2025. You will be joining a project that has the foundations of a narrative, art style, full suite of core tech, and fully functioning team already established. But there is always room for improvement in-line with the project and companies' vision, and you are expected to contribute your experience and creativity to push your discipline even even further, alongside your team.

October 2025
- Attended DreamHack Atlanta 2025
- Won 5 Awards, including 1st in Design & 1st in Production
January 2026
- Secured Funding
May 2026
- Attending DreamHack Atlanta 2026
- Overhauled Game Introduction
June 2026
- Combat Fundamentals Complete
September 2026
- Attend Pax West 2026
October 2026
- All Dungeons Complete
December 2026
- Finalization of Gameplay Elements
Q3 + Q4 2026
- HorrorFest Submission
- Other Eligible Festival Submissions
Q2 2027
- Full Game Release

Note: Project Timeline will be subject to adjustments based on player feedback and major marketing beats will be subject to change based on industry beats such as major game releases (For example, we don’t want to compete with GTA VI). Our primary objectives are to make a bug free complete game and release it well to make the best portfolio piece for you and the team, and highest chance of commercial success.

MINDFLUX: Dead Man Walking (MDMW) is a conceptual-horror RPG where you play Ambrose, a Frankensteinian detective investigating a murder while uncovering the mysteries of your own forgotten past. Modify your mechanized brain, observe suspects' behaviors, and make tactical dialogue choices in this dystopic sci-fi world. The core MDMW Experience includes:

Psychological Horror Elements: Maintaining your deteriorating mental stability affects how you perceive reality…if at all.
Detective Gameplay: Observe NPC behaviors, investigate areas to collect evidence, solve puzzles, and make deductions.
Brain Modification System: Alter your personality and abilities to tackle different dialogue situations, and glean different clues from objects.
Tactical Dialogue: Use observations to navigate complex narrative conversations.

Our game draws from both classic and modern influences:

Traditional CRPGs: Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Fallout 1 & 2, Planescape Torment
Modern RPGs: Fallout: New Vegas, KOTOR 2, Disco Elysium
Psychological Horror: Signalis, S.O.M.A., Eternal Dark

The MINDFLUX IP takes place in humanity's 37th century on Dura, the last island in a flooded world. In this "scrap-punk" society, humanity survives through cobbled-together body modifications from three technological ages, while factions both cooperate and compete for the sake of humanity's future. You play a Cerebroid - an animal granted sentience through an artificial frontal lobe and is forced into approximating the human form through technological modifications. The Cerebroid’s ability to reshape their very identity through communication traits and skill packages at will, makes them efficient but unsettling to humans, who view them as inhuman "skinwalkers." As Ambrose, you experience the unique tension between the advantages and alienations of being a Cerebroid in human society.

Note: Our Steam Page, doesn’t reflect the Horror shift yet, outlined below:

Currently in year 3 of development
Successfully launched initial demo in Steam's October 2024 NextFest
Attended DreamHack Atlanta 2025, winning 1st in Design & Production
Shifting focus to combat elements based on player feedback

Our primary strategy of "Transparent Development" means sharing our game-making journey with both consumers and fellow developers. Here's how we're executing this vision:

Content Marketing & Community Development:

We will be partnering with a community-first brand content production company Mo is starting, Sparkling Hearth, for our digital marketing initiatives. This company will handle creating content for Lost Gate Studios and Salix Augeat, experimenting with various content formats. The end goal of the content is to cultivate virtual and in-person communities for both brands. This company will also handle Brand Development moving forward.

Live Events and Festivals

We are leaning into live events as key marketing milestones, not only to network with content creators, but also to collect live feedback of our games through in person playtests. We also intend to sell merch at these events as an auxilliary form of income. We plan on attending DreamHack Atlanta 2026 and Pax West 2026.

Virtual Game Festivals are also a crucial form of video game marketing. We attended Steam's Detective Fest and will be applying for Story Rich Showcase. We'll apply to Q3 and Q4 festivals as applications become available.

Other Publishing Tactics:

Content Creator Outreach (150+ established contacts, more in progress)
Press Relations for major marketing beats
Exploring merchandise and transmedia opportunities (manga, novel, zine, apparel etc.)
Note: Team members are encouraged to participate in marketing efforts at your comfort level

Additionally, we are currently rolling out a massive branding overhaul for both the Salix Augeat and Lost Gate studios branding. Brand Style Guides for both brands have been created including new logo marks, typography and colors. We are currently updating websites. Presentation is important to us, and we want to represent ourselves and the team (including you) as aesthetically, and cohesively as possible! :)

What does the time commitment look like?
- We expect everyone to work 20 hrs a week. As you are a contractor you set your own time blocks of work, as long as you attend the agreed on recurring meetings. If you will be taking a vacation or will be unavailable ahead of time, let us know with a reasonable amount of heads up, and you can make up those hours for payment within the contract length terms.
What does the day-to-day look like?
- We utilize Scrum/Agile methodology with two week Sprints. About every two weeks we have a Sprint Review where the whole team gets together to discuss progress, timeline adjustments and upcoming marketing initiatives. You’ll have two 15 min check-ins with your team every week and a weekly 1-2 hr iteration meeting where y’all can give each other feedback and discuss bottlenecks and pipeline issues. We don’t allow crunch and as you take on a new task, we work with you on a date of completion based on your velocity, schedule etc.
What tools/software do you use?
- Our Game Dev Tech is Unity as our game engine of choice, and GitHub for Branch Management and Project Repository. Our "Production Tech Stack" is comprised of Slack for comms, AirTable for task and asset management, a Google Shared Drive for asset storage, and Notion for our document repository. We will use Quickbooks for payment processing.
How Does Invoicing/Payment Work?
- Whenever you work for us on the project, you are required to submit a short "Time Entry Report" that includes, how much you worked during a working session, what you worked on and attachment of your progress. This not only keeps the team updated on everyone's progress but supports task management and hours for billing. At the end of a paycycle, you will be able to review your Pay Proposal through AirTable to approve or dispute the pay amount. Then we will send the payment through Quickbooks via Direct Deposit.
What is the status of the project?
- We are in the bowels of Production. We have a baseline demo (which you can play on Steam now) and we are updating it to include the horror gameplay elements and adjusting level design and environment art based on feedback. We are also currently developing the combat side of the game.

Pay Compensation Details:

Incentives Beyond Pay Compensation:

While 1099 contract work is common in the video game industry, this paradigm is a pitstop for us. Our grand objective is to take the MDMW team as full time W-2 employees through the success of MINDFLUX: Dead Man Walking, other transmedia initiatives from Lost Gate Studios and content initiatives from Salix Augeat. We seek to build and establish a studio with staying power, making the kinds of games we want to see in the world: nourishing, reflective, and fun, challenging the player to uncover truths about themselves. 1099s are a means to an end, not the final destination for Lost Gate Studios and Salix Augeat.

Salix Augeat, LLC is a video game production company that recruits, produces and publishes Video game development studios and their games. We believe games have a responsibility to nourish the souls of its players and we want all game devs who are willing to put the work in and grow in their craft to work in the industry. We aim to accomplish these ambitions through creating content for game devs about the "back-end" of the industry and sharing our own experiences of games we produce and publish in house as well.

Speaking of which, Lost Gate Studios is our first in-house studio. The team at Lost Gate Studios believes that role play exposes us to the truth about humanity. As such, we want to create mind-bending experiences that explore the deepest most fundamental parts of the human spirit. Our first roleplay experience is MINDFLUX: Dead Man Walking (MDMW), a psychological-horror RPG. (more on MDMW on the next tab)

Right now, we are in the process of making "Lost Gate Studios" an official legal subsidiary under Salix Augeat. For now, you will be legally contracted with Salix Augeat as it's the only one of the two that's a legal entity. But to consumers, you'll be framed as part of the "Lost Gate Studios dev team".

*Don't hesitate to email Mo with any questions about this structure*