Sound Designer

The Last Sage is an original VR-first dark fantasy RPG that combines party-based tactical combat, environmental storytelling, and psychological themes into a deeply immersive experience.

We're looking for a Sound Designer who wants to build the sound of this world from the beginning. A world shaped by history, sacrifice, and forgotten truths, where the player stands inside every space and can hear what's behind them. In combat, sound also does the job a HUD does in other games.

About the Project

Core gameplay systems are already functional, including combat, party systems, stress mechanics, AI foundations, and exploration. The project's next milestone is a playable showcase demo that supports future funding efforts.

Why This Role Matters

The audio systems for The Last Sage are built, and very little of the sound itself exists yet.

What we need now is someone who can give the game its sound and make combat playable by ear.

Combat has no conventional HUD. The player may be looking the other way when an enemy starts a charge, a party member gets close to breaking, or a command lands. Those moments have to be clear from sound, and they have to stay clear in the middle of a full fight.

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity to define the sound of an original universe from the ground up.

Routing, spatialization, and the dynamic score are already working. Unfilled sound slots already fire in the game with a deliberately wrong placeholder, so you can hear exactly where and when each sound plays before you choose or design it.

As Sound Designer, you'll work directly with the project's founder to set how the game sounds and take the demo to a finished mix.

What You'll Own

You'll own everything the player hears apart from music and voice, including:

You'll also influence the game's audio direction, naming and folder conventions, and how sound pairs with effects and animation.

What Success Looks Like

By the conclusion of this engagement, the demo will have no placeholder sounds left and a mix that holds up in a headset. Success is measured by whether a player can follow a full fight by ear.

Expected deliverables include:

Production Context

This engagement focuses on sound design, library selection, and mixing, around 90 sound effects for the demo in total. Music and voice recording are handled separately, and engineering and hook work are handled by the founder.

You'll initially collaborate with:

Project status

Designing for VR

This project is built for VR first. This changes how sound is experienced.

Players stand inside the world and can turn toward anything they hear. Ambience comes from real places in the space, built from multiple emitters instead of a single flat loop, and anything the player touches should sound like an object instead of a menu. The project also holds a 90 fps floor on PCVR, so voice counts in a full fight need real limits.

Experience with VR development is valuable, though candidates with transferable experience in spatial audio or first-person games are also encouraged to apply.

Who You Are

We're less interested in job titles than in experience solving the kinds of creative problems this project presents.

Ideal candidates may include:

We're especially interested in people who have worked on:

The Ideal Sound Designer for The Last Sage

You enjoy:

Engagement

This is a fractional, milestone-based contract engagement focused on the project's showcase demo. Demo content locks on February 1, 2027, so your availability before then matters.

Compensation combines paid milestone work with the opportunity to participate in the project's longer-term success through revenue sharing on accepted demo work, consistent with the project's collaboration model.

Learn More

If this opportunity resonates with you, we'd love to start a conversation. We'll share additional material with interested candidates, including a worldbuilding overview, the deliverables for this role, and the demo roadmap.