What is RistoCat?
RistoCat is a Pokémon-meets-finance game to help young adults learn financial strategies, purely through gameplay. Taking inspiration from Animal Crossing and Club Penguin, players engage with their real-world finances through an immersive, cat-themed world filled with characters they can grow, customize, and care for – think Tamagotchi meets money management. We’re building toward a public launch and are looking for a developer intern to help us expand the game’s world and bring its characters to life programmatically.
About the Position
This is a hands-on engineering role at an exciting stage of development. The core gameplay loop is built and has been validated with playtesters. We’re now expanding the Tamagotchi elements of the game. You’ll work directly with the founder to deepen the Tamagotchi elements of the game: building out a richer world for cats to inhabit, and programming cat companions with distinct personalities, preferences, and behaviors that players can discover and customize. If you’ve ever wanted to work on the systems that make a game world feel genuinely alive, this is that opportunity.
The internship is eligible for 3 hours of course credit, pending submission and approval of a BDP Connecting Experience proposal, and is structured as approximately 18-20 hours per week over 8 weeks during Summer 2026. This internship is also remote-friendly with async flexibility.
Responsibilities
- Extend the game world with new environments, interactive elements, and ambient behaviors that deepen immersion
- Design and implement a personality system for cat companions, including individual traits, preferences, and reactive behaviors
- Build out customization mechanics that allow players to shape and express their cats’ identities over time
- Collaborate with the founder to scope features, review implementations, and iterate based on playtesting feedback
- Write clean, maintainable code that integrates smoothly into the existing codebase
Required Qualifications
- Programming experience in any object-oriented language (Java, Python, C++, Swift, Kotlin, etc.)
- Comfort picking up new languages quickly – our codebase is in Dart, which is approachable for anyone with prior coding experience
- Strong problem-solving instincts and ability to work independently
- Interest in game development, simulation systems, or interactive design
- Clear and proactive communication
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with game engines. We’re specifically using Flutter’s Flame engine, but prior experience is not required
- Familiarity with game AI concepts such as behavior trees, state machines, or need-based systems
- Experience building or playing games with simulation or life-sim mechanics (Animal Crossing, The Sims, Tamagotchi)
- Exposure to mobile game development
- Interest in fintech, educational technology, or behavior design
What You’ll Gain
- Shipped feature work on a real, actively developed product
- Hands-on experience designing game systems from the ground up – not just implementing tickets
- Direct mentorship from an indie developer across the full product cycle
How to Apply
Please send a link to any relevant work (GitHub, portfolio, or past projects), your resume, and a brief note about why this project interests you to shiva@ristocat.com by April 30th.
NOTE: This is an unpaid position and can be used for a BDP internship Connecting Experience.
Leave a Reply