INTERVIEW – In Conversation With Remigiusz Michalski (Burnhouse Lane, Harvester Games)

By Marty Mulrooney

Alternative Magazine Online reviewed Burnhouse Lane earlier this year, describing it as ‘a wonderful horror adventure that is quite frankly unmissable for those who loved the Devil Came Through Here trilogy.’ As a longtime fan of Harvester Games and The Cat Lady, Downfall: Redux and Lorelai, I have followed Remigiusz Michalski’s career for well over a decade now and he is yet to disappoint. I am therefore delighted to present an exclusive online interview with Rem – aka the Stephen King of video games – where we discuss the creation of Burnhouse Lane, working collaboratively with his brother and what the future holds.

Hey Rem, thank you for your time and welcome back to Alternative Magazine Online!

Hi, thanks for having me! It’s always a pleasure to be here.

It’s hard to believe that our last interview (following the release of Downfall: Redux) was in 2016! At the time, you had just moved back to your hometown to become a full-time game developer – how has life in Poland been treating you?

I’m not sure it’s the same Poland I remember from when I was younger… On one hand, it’s been great to do gamedev full time instead of treating it as a hobby and only sneaking in an occasional couple of hours of work here and there. On the other – during these last few years we’ve had the pandemic, the war across the border and all sorts of political ups and downs and I’m pretty sure the apocalypse is just around the corner… but at least as a gamer I’m ready for it!

And as a gamedev… I guess I’m honestly in a better position than most because I can just hide in my quiet little room, stick a pair of headphones on my head and take refuge in the worlds I create, away from society. I have my family close and the perfect job I’ve always dreamed of, so for the most part I feel happy in my little bubble.

Congratulations on the recent release of your latest game, Burnhouse Lane. As I’m sure you could tell from my review, I really enjoyed it. Is it fair to say that this game was designed to be accessible to both fans and newcomers alike?

Yes, definitely! I’ve made a lot of games over the years and I always make sure they’re easy to get into for someone who just randomly picks one up and decides to give it a try. For some that could be a major turn-off – they find an interesting game only to discover that it’s part of a long-running franchise (it happened to me a few times).

All my games can be played as individual stories with no extra knowledge required – there’s usually a familiar face or two making a cameo but it won’t matter if players don’t know who they are. They’re only there because I have fun adding them in new scenarios and because hardcore fans like to see what happens to their favourite characters in their new iterations. Joe, Susan, Mitzi, Lorelai and now Angie… they’re all part of me and I will always revisit them just to see what they’re up to.

How would you describe the premise of Burnhouse Lane?

Burnhouse Lane is a story about going through sickness. It’s about the things that happen inside our heads and inside our hearts; the anger, the loss and eventually the acceptance. Except… in Burnhouse Lane I wanted to ask the question: what if we could make the impossible happen and cure the incurable illness? What if we were offered this one-in-a-million chance? How far would that make us go to win our life back?

The game’s title is both memorable and striking. Is there a real Burnhouse Lane out there somewhere?

As a matter of fact – there is! In Exeter, Devon. I was always told it’s the dodgy part of town but it seemed fine to me. And by that I mean that no one came at me with a knife and I didn’t notice any houses to actually burn. Still, the name struck a chord with me and I’ve known since then that one day it will be the title of one of my games. Also, I think it’s actually called Burnthouse Lane in real life.

What makes England such a perfect setting for your games?

Because England is perfect for anything! I just… miss it so much. It took me in and made me feel like I ‘belonged’ when I was young and lost and I didn’t know what I wanted in life. My games are a testament to the love I have for all those people and places that I’ve left behind. I always say I’m like Bilbo Baggins who never quite got over his great adventures out there in the big world and couldn’t find peace in the Shire, so he was just biding his time until one day he would go on another journey.

The Devil Came Through Here trilogy officially ended with Lorelai, but Burnhouse Lane feels very much like a natural extension of those previous three games. Was it difficult to strike a balance between the familiar and the new?

I wanted it to have that ‘Cat Lady’ feel while essentially being a very different game altogether. A new game from me comes with certain expectations these days and fans want to see the elements they enjoyed in previous games – so I make sure I include those but also add enough new stuff to prevent the game from feeling stale and keep me interested as well (I’d never make a carbon copy of an old game just because it was successful – it simply wouldn’t be fun for me). Burnhouse Lane actually started its life as The Cat Lady 2 – but it quickly morphed into its own story and I decided to let it.

I really loved Angie as a protagonist – what are the key ingredients when writing such a strong female character?

For me, rule number one is: don’t try too hard. Don’t overdo it, don’t overthink it – just look at the screen and let that character live their own life and follow them as they do. I like to play every scene A LOT and see it in action, even if it’s just two characters standing in one spot talking. If it feels right, it stays. If it feels wrong I try a different angle. I always want my characters to talk and behave as if they were real people. I’m here to tell a very human story, not impress anyone with how many fancy words I can fit into a sentence.

Also, I’m not the most social person. I spend a lot of time on my own in front of the computer screen, my only real-life companion being my wife who I suppose a lot of my female protagonists are based on, whether I want it or not. Every artist has their muse and she is mine, so there’s a part of her in every female character I write too.

Is it true that Aarno is a real person? I’m glad I managed to save him in the game!

Yes. Aarno Malin is one of my many internet friends. He runs a YouTube channel dedicated to his all-time favourite classic game Harvester. We were talking one day and he told me that his lifelong dream has been to become a character in a videogame. So I thought… wait, I can make that happen! And I did my best to make his dream come true. We went through a bunch of his photos and made an NPC that doesn’t just look like him but is also voiced by him (he offered to do it) and shares Aarno’s affinity for all things gory (those who remember the original Harvester will know how obscenely brutal it was at times). I even put his beloved cat, Milla, in the game.

To be honest, I found it very inspiring to write for him, trying to imagine what real Aarno would say but also drawing a clear line where reality mixed with fiction. I mean, he can die in the game by getting impaled and having his heart torn out and eaten by his killer – that’s the kind of thing most people would not like to see happen to them on screen, but I knew he would love an epic death like that and I made no mistake! He is also the key to achieving the game’s ultra-hard Golden Ending.

You switched from using Adventure Game Studio (AGS) to the Unity game engine for Lorelai and stuck with it for Burnhouse Lane. What benefits has this change in engine brought to the development process?

I love working with Unity. To be honest, I’ve already kinda forgotten how to use AGS… I will always look back at it fondly because it got me to where I am now, but there is no denying that it’s not capable of half the things that Unity can do – the huge levels that you can jump into and playtest whenever you want (in AGS you had to make a build every time you wanted to test something), the particle effects, the post-processing, all those fancy shaders and rig-based animations… It’s important to use the right tool for the right job.

AGS is fine if all you want to make is a retro point-and-click adventure game. But my games have already evolved into a genre of their own, mixing elements of survival horror and Telltale-style make-your-own-adventure games with a strong emphasis on inventory-based and environmental puzzles. So Unity makes perfect sense in my case, especially since I can now set up 2D scenes filled with sprites in a 3D environment and use 2D lights – which gives the game this great natural depth instead of faking it with parallax effects. For me, it’s like a giant sandbox full of toys – and I love playing with them all.

There is more combat in Burnhouse Lane than in any of your previous games – what was the thought process behind this?

I’ve always wanted to do that – but it’s a difficult feature to add in a 2D game when you’re a very small team with little experience in action games. We finally did it, though! It’s all very basic stuff but I believe it really adds to the immersion in a horror game when you know death could be waiting around every corner and you have to be constantly on your guard, especially since most enemies can insta-kill you.

The fights are rare but when they do happen they pack a serious punch and give you that satisfaction of actually defeating the enemy yourself instead of just watching a cutscene – that makes such a huge difference! It also helps to add more interesting gameplay elements to a game in which you spend a lot of time talking and solving puzzles – this formula can quickly grow old if you’re not careful. A good game is like a balanced meal where none of the ingredients on the plate overpowers the rest but instead, they work together in perfect harmony.

The ashtrays serving as save points was another nice touch – a nod to the typewriters in Resident Evil perhaps?

Of course! But they are more than that – smoking is what gave our protagonist her cancer and yet we go through the game relying on these ashtrays, treating them as our lifeline. We feel a sense of relief every time we find one in the same way a smoker feels whenever they have a chance to smoke a cigarette (I smoked for over 10 years myself and know that feeling all too well…). So really, the thing that kills us is also keeping us alive. It helps the non-smoking part of the audience get into the shoes of a nicotine addict. This being a save system is also a major pain in the ass for some people – much like smoking in real life is.

Your brother composed another beautiful soundtrack for Burnhouse Lane, but he was also responsible for the character art this time around. What was it like working with him closely on such important aspects of the project?

It was good – he was a perfect wingman! We’d always done lots of things together ever since we were kids – playing tabletop RPGs, making comic books, playing in a band, travelling – so it made sense to team up, especially since he was struggling with making his own game in his spare time and was ready to give up and I was kinda in between projects, unsure what to do after finishing Lorelai and splitting up with the publisher, looking for a new beginning…

Michał did more than character art and music – he created many of the graphical assets used for backgrounds, did some programming and helped me shape the overall story of Burnhouse Lane. We brainstormed a lot, making sure all aspects of the game were well thought out and everything made logical sense. In a way, this also brought us even closer as brothers – we’ve talked every day for over three years now, bouncing ideas off each other. This really is super nice when you can share that passion with someone the way that only best friends do.

The voice acting is superb, particularly for Angie, George and the Burned Cat. How difficult was the casting process?

I was scared when I started the casting calls because it was actually the first time I was doing this (this is something my publisher would’ve taken care of in the past). But… it turned out it wasn’t that hard at all! I think for the most part I just got really lucky to have all these talented fantastic people come through at the perfect time, but also having a bit of a reputation in the industry based on the success of my previous games really helped – all those actors already had an idea of what they were signing up for and really wanted to do it! There were so many auditions I felt bad I couldn’t respond to them all…

But to be fair, I knew I found my main actors – Angie (Elizabeth Nightingale), George (Ian Russell), Jenny (Madison Mitts) – the moment I heard them. It’s always such a relief when you hear your characters speak with real voices. It makes everything click into place. One of the characters that gets a lot of praise is the Burned Cat played by my friend Davey Cadaver, a painter from Portland. It was his first time doing voice acting and getting the role of a cat-like creature from another world was quite a task… and yet he absolutely nailed it. I really hope he pursues VO as a career.

I have been calling you ‘the Stephen King of video games’ for many years now and it’s nice to see that many people appear to agree with me. In fact, I think there might have been a physical release of the original Downfall where I was quoted saying exactly that! (If you have a copy, I’d love to see it.) Is Stephen King still a major influence on your own writing?

Yup, I’m still a sad old man who only reads Stephen King… Just kidding, of course – there’s nothing wrong with being a fan of Stephen King. I absolutely love that guy! And I do occasionally read other writers (only to feel disappointed and go back to anything new that King’s written in the meantime). It is an absolute honour to be called ‘the Stephen King of video games’ and I will always take it, even though I will also blush a little because I know I will never quite reach King’s level of brilliance. I’ve also been called a Polish Kojima – which is rather silly but very flattering. My games couldn’t be more different than those that Kojima makes (but I do enjoy them very much regardless).

Do you have a favourite moment in Burnhouse Lane?

I think my favourite moment comes during a dialogue with a character that’s meant to be our friend but suddenly changes into this mean evil person that knows exactly what to say to hurt us. I loved writing that because I felt like I broke some boundaries there and it was brave and shocking and very well acted by Elizabeth and Madison who had such amazing chemistry on screen. And I think most of all I like that I wasn’t planning on it – it was one of those moments in the story that happened organically all on its own when I let the story take over the steering wheel for a moment. Those are always the most precious to me.

Your games always have multiple endings, including a ‘Golden Ending’ which is the happiest. I was delighted to unlock this ending when playing Burnhouse Lane. When writing the story for each of your games, do you have a particular ending in mind as ‘canon’ or are they all equally valid?

I’m so glad you managed to get the Golden Ending! It’s the best Golden Ending I’ve ever made, at least for me. But they’re all equally valid, I think. I’m not the kind of person who would replay the game to get a different ending – I usually accept the one I get, even if it sucks (I’m looking at you Detroit: Become Human! God, why did they all have to DIE?!?).

Are there any plans to release Burnhouse Lane on additional platforms?

Yes – I’ve signed up with horror publisher Feardemic and they’re porting Burnhouse Lane to consoles as we speak! This process takes a while… but in a few months’ time, the game should be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox. This, for me, is personally a HUGE deal. I grew up playing consoles and while I’m mostly a PC gamer these days I’m over the moon about this finally happening!

What’s next for you, Rem?

More games! I’m still adding translations to Burnhouse Lane and overlooking the console porting work but Michał and I have already started working on a new project and it will probably fully consume the next three years of our lives. And as always, I’m expecting it to be the best game I’ve ever made.

Thank you for your time – as always, I can’t wait to see what you do next!

Thank you! Until next time, old friend!