It’s Time for Talent – with Alex Marques

Hi, my name is Alex, it’s nice to virtually meet you! 👋

I joined Tactile in September 2025 as a Lead Data Analyst. My role is to help drive analytics across Lily’s Garden, our main title, by providing data-driven insights that support better product decisions. Together with the Analytics team, I work closely with Product to grow our games whilst making sure player experience remains at the heart of every change. I’m also involved in pushing forward strategic initiatives, such as the implementation of our new BI tool.

🚀 Before Tactile

My career path hasn’t been a linear one, which honestly makes it more fun! I’ve always enjoyed math and problem-solving, which led me to study Applied Mathematics, followed by a Master’s in Finance driven by an early interest in investments. From there, I moved into consulting, partly influenced by the career paths of friends and colleagues at the time.

It quickly became clear that consulting wasn’t for me, and I decided to try something new. That decision led me into a more analytics-focused role, where I developed the skills that shaped my next career steps. When I came across a role at Miniclip, I knew I had to apply. Having spent much of my teenage years playing PC and PlayStation games (mostly sports games), joining the gaming industry felt natural. I spent five years there learning everything I know today about the industry.

💜 Joining Tactile

I joined Tactile at a point in my career where I felt ready for a new challenge and wanted to see how things were done elsewhere.

Tactile ticked all the boxes: a great company, inspiring people, exciting games, and an opportunity to deepen my knowledge of the match-3 genre. Since joining, I’ve found the environment just as dynamic and collaborative as I hoped for and it continues to evolve in exciting ways.

💪 Having an impact

Our Analytics team helps to uncover trends and insights that might otherwise go unnoticed – we’re essentially the detectives of the company. Using tools like SQL, R, or Python, we dive deep into data to find answers and guide decisions.

That said, improving our games is very much a team effort. We collaborate closely with Product Managers, Level Designers, Live Ops Managers, Developers, and many others. A key part of our work involves A/B testing, allowing us to experiment, learn, and continuously improve the player experience.

The most rewarding part of my job is knowing that our work directly impacts how people have fun. Tactile’s flat organisational structure also makes a huge difference – being able to regularly discuss ideas with founders is both rare and incredibly educational.

📚 The keys to success

Breaking into the industry feels tougher than ever, and finding great talent is equally challenging. My advice is to:

• Know the product deeply and understand how it truly works
• Be genuinely curious about data and what stories it can tell
• Focus on making suggestions that are thoughtful and actionable
• A strong analytical mindset combined with creativity goes a long way

Careers don’t have to follow a straight line to be successful. Exploring different paths, learning from what doesn’t work, and staying curious can lead you to opportunities you never expected.

Time for Talent – with Riccardo Argiolas

Hi, my name is Riccardo, it’s nice to e-meet you! 👋

I’ve been part of Tactile for about four and a half years, working as a Gameplay Programmer. I started on Lily’s Garden, where I helped bring new content and features to the game. Later, I joined our Content Tools team, supporting designers and artists in shaping their creative visions. Most recently, I moved to the prototyping team, exploring new concepts and developing fresh game ideas.

As a programmer, I collaborate with colleagues across many different disciplines, so my work ranges from implementing UI to bringing gameplay designs to life.

🚀 Before Tactile

I’ve always loved not just playing games, but also creating them. As a kid, I was endlessly curious about board games and video games, always wanting to tweak them or invent my own versions.

Over time, this curiosity expanded into a passion for electronics and robotics. I spent countless hours designing circuits, soldering components, and programming microcontrollers, trying to make my little creations come to life.

After university, I decided to combine my creative interests with my technical ones, and that’s when I entered the games industry. I first worked as a gameplay designer, but soon realized I missed the technical side of development. That led me to move toward more technical design roles and eventually fully into gameplay programming.

💜 Joining Tactile

Joining Tactile has been a major step in my career. I’ve had the chance to work with highly experienced colleagues, learning from them in both hard and soft skills. The scale of the projects here has taught me how to structure and maintain code in a way that keeps it robust, readable, and enjoyable to work with.

Changing teams throughout my time at Tactile has also given me the chance to experience game development from many different angles. Each move – from a live game team, to internal tools, to rapid prototyping – came with its own rhythms, challenges, and ways of thinking. Shifting between these perspectives kept the work fresh and exciting, and it pushed me to adapt, learn new approaches, and see how all the pieces of development fit together.

On top of that, I’ve benefited from internal workshops, book clubs, and knowledge-sharing sessions that have given me new perspectives on how to solve problems and improve my craft.

💪 Having an impact

For me, the best part of working at Tactile is the people. It’s not only about competence and learning opportunities – it’s about how seamlessly ideas flow. Communicating, sharing opinions, and giving and receiving feedback happens naturally and genuinely. This environment makes it easy for me to contribute with my own ideas and grow both personally and professionally.

Being able to collaborate closely with my teammates is what makes the work truly rewarding, and I think that shows in the products we create together.

📚 The keys to success

🏗️ Be curious, and make things! Try building small games, join a game jam or two, talk to people, hear their stories, and learn from those experiences.

🗣️ I remind myself that success isn’t just about hard skills – soft skills matter just as much, and sometimes even more. Writing good code is important, but so is communicating clearly, understanding others, and learning how to turn ideas into reality.

🤝 A key to growth is embracing collaboration. Even a simple conversation with a colleague can reshape a problem or spark a new idea. Asking questions, sharing early drafts, and working through challenges together has always helped me reach better solutions than working in isolation.

It’s Time for Talent – With Pelinsu Ayas

Hi, my name is Pelinsu, it’s nice to e-meet you! 👋

I joined Tactile in February 2025 as a Level Designer, and I can’t believe it’s already been nine months, it’s flown by! I design levels for Lily’s Garden, creating experiences that bring joy to our beloved players.

💡As level designers, we collaborate closely with data scientists, QA engineers, gameboard artists, developers and producers. Our role is to bridge creative vision and player experience, translating data-driven insights into engaging gameplay. Beyond designing levels, we also design new gameboard mechanics, haptics, difficulty curves, and A/B tests to ensure a smooth and engaging journey for our players.

🚀 Before Tactile

Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of creating products that people would enjoy and spend quality time with. That passion led me to study Industrial Design. This was long before I even knew that “level design” was a possible career path!

During my studies, I discovered a love for designing digital products, especially through research and A/B testing. That curiosity for digital experiences, where a single design decision could impact millions of people completely hooked me.

With this knowledge, I joined the gaming industry. I started working as a level designer at Peak Games where I worked on a game called Toy Blast. Later on I joined Space Ape Games where I designed levels for a game called Chrome Valley Customs. Both games taught me a lot in terms of the gaming industry and level design. Despite both being casual Match-3 games, level design approaches and mechanics were quite different.

Working on both an established title and a brand-new game gave me the rare chance to see the full spectrum of product development and apply my product design background in meaningful ways.

After some time in the industry, I started looking for opportunities that would allow me to work more closely with a wider variety of stakeholders. I’d known about Tactile Games for a while, and when this opportunity came up, I knew it was the right next step for me.

💜 Joining Tactile

When I joined Tactile, I had a very smooth transition from London, where I was based at the time, to Copenhagen. Everyone was very helpful, kind and welcoming! I also already knew some of my future colleagues from my previous workplaces, which was a really nice plus.

Before Tactile, I worked in smaller teams and within more traditional work models. At Tactile, our team spans different countries and time zones, and adapting to this diverse, flexible setup has been a really rewarding experience.

We’re an agile and dynamic team. Whether it’s a quick 10-minute sync to solve an issue or adjusting our plans to tackle something urgent, we move fast and collaborate deeply. That adaptability is essential in today’s gaming industry, and I love being part of such a responsive and forward-thinking environment. Our team also got bigger, so now we have more capacity to experiment and innovate.

💪 Having an impact

My team is responsible for everything relating to our in-game gameboard. This means that we are designing new levels, blockers and gameplay mechanics, adjusting level difficulties, as well as designing and maintaining a variety of A/B tests all with the aim of improving our player experiences.

The most rewarding part for me is seeing how our work directly impacts players. There’s nothing quite like looking at the data after a release or an A/B test and seeing positive results, or spotting enthusiastic player feedback about a level or mechanic we designed. That’s the kind of motivation that makes me want to keep pushing boundaries.

Within my team, we have a strong culture of collaboration, which comes to everyone quite naturally and intuitively. In my opinion, this is very important and something that is not easy to find. It’s rare to have such high levels of shared creativity.

🗝️ The keys to success

If you are a designer aspiring to join the gaming industry, my only recommendation would be that you follow the latest trends in the industry and identify where your unique skills can make a difference. The industry is incredibly dynamic, which makes it exciting, but also challenging.

When you play games, try to think like a designer. Observe what works well, what could be improved, and what you personally enjoy. Imagine how you would design that level or mechanic differently. This mindset will naturally sharpen your design intuition and creativity.

As a final thought, collaboration, as well as giving and receiving feedback are keys to being successful as a level designer and team player. Having these soft skills are as important as having the technical skills.

Every level, every blocker, every A/B test can be improved, and being open to discussing improvements makes the process both more efficient and far more enjoyable. When ideas flow freely, creativity thrives and that’s where strong collaboration really happens.