Rita Lebedeva’s Post

We’re Hiring: Head Scout CRITICAL REFLEX is an independent game publisher with a cult following and a taste for beautiful nightmares: strange, atmospheric, emotionally raw games that feel like a fever dream you want to go back to. We’re not here to chase trends. We’re here to find the next myths. This role is the taste engine of the label. You’ll be the one hunting down the weird, the sharp, the unsettling and bringing them home before anyone else even realizes what they’re looking at. The Work 🍄 Hunt for games that feel like CR titles before they even know they’re CR titles 🍄 Reshape and own our scouting system: where we look, how we track, what makes something beautiful enough to ruin lives 🍄 Live in the ecosystems where strange games are born: itch, newborn pages on Steam, alt festivals, student showcases, Discord servers, regional scenes 🍄 Maintain a constantly updated pipeline of projects with clear notes, priorities, and follow-up plans 🍄 Evaluate pitches and prototypes: creative potential, commercial reality, risk profile, “is this CR-coded enough?” 🍄 Be the dev’s first contact: warm, honest, no-bullshit communication and realistic expectations 🍄 Surface new voices: overlooked regions, atypical teams, non-traditional backgrounds 🍄 Keep an eye on the horizon: trends, over-saturated niches, upcoming shifts in horror, indie, experimental design 🍄 Represent CR at events, juries, showcases, online communities - as the person whose taste our brand literally leans on Who You Are 🍄🟫 3+ years in game scouting, publishing, production, curation, journalism, consulting, or anything where your job was to evaluate games, people, and potential 🍄🟫 You have receipts: games you spotted early, teams you backed, scenes you helped grow, or lineups you curated 🍄🟫 You think in vibes and spreadsheets: you can fall in love with a prototype and still ask hard questions about scope, budget and timeline 🍄🟫 Your taste is specific, not generic: you can explain why this particular weird horror VN matters more than ten other polished but soulless things 🍄🟫 Comfortable giving honest feedback to devs without being an asshole 🍄🟫 You genuinely care about creators: their safety, their sustainability, their rights 🍄🟫 You’re not here to clock in and vanish. You want to shape a catalogue that people will study ten years from now and go, “what the hell was CR cooking?” This is our front line. You’ll work closely with the founder and BD on what CR becomes in the next 3-5 years. How to Apply Send a short note about who you are, what corners of the game universe you haunt, and 3-5 released games you wish we had signed (with one-sentence reasons for each). Attach your CV (or LinkedIn) and send everything to rita@criticalreflex.com with the subject line: HEAD SCOUT - YOUR NAME. EU or close time zones are strongly preferred. (And yes, you can absolutely send this to your most taste-obsessed friends.)