{"id":2056,"date":"2026-03-27T00:09:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/somgeek.eu\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2026-09-06T13:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T11:30:14","slug":"interview-with-rem-michalski-about-havester-games-studio-and-the-upcoming-game-trainwatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somgeek.eu\/index.php\/2026\/03\/27\/interview-with-rem-michalski-about-havester-games-studio-and-the-upcoming-game-trainwatch\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Rem Michalski about Harvester Games Studio and the upcoming game Trainwatch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For fans of horror point and click adventures is studio Harvester Games very well known. Since 2009 it delivers very interesting, intense and strong games, that can always surprise. In close future we should expect their new game Trainwatch, so we decided to talk a bit with the founder Rem Michalski, who found a bit of time and answered a few of our questions. We therefore bring yoy some interresting news about the upcoming game as well as about the history of the studio.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for agreeing on the interview. Could you maybe first tell us where the story of Harvester Games began?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Harvester Games began with me, young Rem, arriving in England with his girlfriend, now wife, in the early 2000\u2019s. I\u2019d work any job I could get – from hotel kitchens to cleaning toilets. At some point I even worked on a horse farm! I eventually landed a job in a nursing home for old people and I actually enjoyed working there. There was a really friendly vibe there and I felt accepted and needed and made lots of friends among the staff. At night, when everyone was asleep, my job was to just be there in case anything happened. So instead of watching TV all night or snoozing in the chair like most of my colleagues, I bought a second hand laptop and worked on my first game to the sound of people snoring. My working hours were mostly midnight till 6 AM. And… that\u2019s how I made Downfall – a really gory horror point & click adventure game! The problem was, I didn\u2019t really know what to do with it (it was shortly before Steam blew up)… so I made a list of all the websites that sold games and I emailed everyone on that list. And man, was that a long list! At first there was just silence or rejection. Then one guy simply said: ok, we\u2019ll publish it. His name was Mike and the website was called Direct2Drive. It was 2009. I sold 67 copies in the first month. But that\u2019s how it all started…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How did the name of the studio came to life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, Mike from Direct2Drive said I needed a name and I had like 5 minutes to think of something… So, in my head I went back to my childhood, remembered the classic ultra-violent game Harvester that inspired me as a kid just by the way it looked on the screenshots (I\u2019d actually never played it at that point). I remembered Dune 2 (I played it on Amiga 500 when I was like 10) – which had Harvesters – vehicles that extracted Spice from under the sand… And of course the rock band I had when I was 18 – we were called Harvester also! (for the same reasons) I guess that\u2019s a tradition for me now to use this name, like Witcher Geralt always calling his horses \u201eRoach\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As far as I know you are a solo developer of your games, but still wanted to ask, whether someone else worked also on your games?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sometimes I hire people to do a specific job, like create characters and animations for them (Downfall Remake and Lorelai), write some code that\u2019s too difficult for me to write myself (The Cat Lady\u2019s interface) or make music (with a couple of exceptions, I do not make my own music). And while it\u2019s super useful to sometimes ask for help, I really prefer to work alone. The only game I made in a team was Burnhouse Lane but that was a little different – there was only 2 of us and the other person was my brother who was actually my next door neighbour at the time. I really enjoyed the experience and I think the game turned out insanely good but after completing it I went back to being a lone wolf. The process of making my games is deeply personal. It really involves a dash of insanity and obsession that you can only achieve by living this thing 24\/7… and that\u2019s what I do. Call me crazy, but there\u2019s never a moment in my day that I don\u2019t think about what I\u2019ll do next in my game. These games are part of me and it\u2019s hard to share this level of passion with someone else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Which game of the ones you have released would you call your personal favorite? Or do you not make favorites between your projects?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When people ask this, sometimes I say Downfall (2016 remake) is my favourite… But I\u2019m not really sure. I think I always love the most the game I\u2019m currently working on. I play it a lot and I\u2019m so hyped and I always think: this is the one. The greatest game ever made! Haha! As a disclaimer, I have NOT made the greatest game in the world YET… but I feel it\u2019s just around the corner so be ready for it!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The games I have played from you always feel very dark and focus on very serious topics, which I very much enjoy. What is the source of inspiration for these heroes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born in the 80\u2019s and grew up watching horror films, reading horror novels (to this day I\u2019ve read every book Stephen King has written) and playing violent video games. What genre other than horror could I do? I was shaped by this stuff, it\u2019s changed me to my core… You know, I\u2019m the kind of guy who watched all the Saw movies at least 3 times! I adore Freddy Krueger! Huge fan of Michael Myers! And somehow consuming this sort of content didn\u2019t turn me into a deranged psychopath (like some people claim it does…) – I\u2019m still a nice sensitive guy, a dad of 2 and a loving husband. Cos on top of all that stuff, I\u2019m also the kind of person who cried watching Adolescence, smoked cigarettes with old ladies in the nursing home\u2019s garden (while listening to their stories for the 10th time), read books to his kids every night for years and years and sat with dying people in the last minutes of their lives holding their hand and watching them go… So I guess I\u2019ve absorbed a lot of different experiences and they all come through in what I create. And my games might not always be perfect, but they are always honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Do you have a favorite character of your games?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hmm… I don\u2019t know. I really like Joe Davis (from Downfall), as he is basically me (not 100% of course, I don\u2019t even have an axe!). But I guess Susan Ashworth aka The Cat Lady will always be my number 1 – it was her that people massively fell in love with and it\u2019s because of her that I was able to move back to Poland and start making games full-time. For all I know, I might never create a character as great as her… Which is odd, because I clearly remember how she came to be: I played Metal Gear Solid 4 and I thought: wow, that\u2019s a bold move to make the main character an older guy with a moustache (who looks like my dad). So I made Susan – a 40 year old depressed cat lady, curious how people would react to her… and everyone suddenly identified with her so strongly! So yes, if there\u2019s a lesson for the gaming industry to learn here, it\u2019s to include more real flawed human beings and less gigantic boobs and laser guns (though to be fair, there\u2019s time and place for boobs and lasers in videogames too, just not in every single game!).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Let\u00b4s move to your upcoming project „Trainwatch“. What can we expect this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trainwatch is a shift towards something new. I felt like I needed to do something different… I don\u2019t wanna end up like Ubisoft, making sequel after sequel. I\u2019d suffocate… To be an artist is to explore, to discover, to find exciting new ways of expressing whatever\u2019s important to me at this point of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fair, when I started Trainwatch, I was just experimenting. Imagine a lump of clay and a guy sitting in front of it, looking at it and rubbing his chin… I had this free 3D model of a Banana Man from Unity Asset Store running around an empty environment. Then I added the building. Then the railway tracks. And the trees and fog… Then Banana Man was replaced by my own model… And it grew, day after day, into something truly amazing, I think!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a good idea for a game developer to abandon his heritage and do something completely different but Trainwatch isn\u2019t really completely different – it has all the elements of my previous games (the branching dialogues, inventory puzzles, horror aesthetic etc) but it adds some stuff that flips everything upside down – the 3D world and a ticking clock and a gameplay loop that could turn out to be one of the greatest metaphors of modern life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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