Michał Wasiak

The moment the decision crystallized wasn’t while playing a game, but while witnessing a pivotal shift in the industry—the rise of player-driven narratives and dynamic world simulation. For me, it was around 2014–2015, watching titles like The Witcher 3 and early survival games reveal the immense player hunger for agency and consequence in detailed virtual worlds. It was the realization that games were moving beyond linear spectacle and becoming truly reactive spaces. Initially, that passion was purely creative—a desire to tell sophisticated stories. Over time, however, it evolved into a fascination with systems design and engineering. Now, the drive is less about writing a fixed narrative and more about designing the rules that let countless unique player stories emerge organically. We want to build the complex clockwork mechanism—the world’s rules—and then step back to watch players generate the infinite stories that follow. This shift from storytelling to systemic world-building defines our work at Above The Desk.

Above The Desk is an independent game studio powered by a small but passionate team—a mix of seasoned industry veterans and bold new talent. We believe that this blend of perspectives, skills, and creative energy is our greatest strength. Our mission is to craft games that stand out through original ideas, engaging mechanics, and a sharp sense of humor. We don’t cut corners—we focus on originality, quality, and fresh takes on familiar formulas.

The historical “Winter of Terror”—an unprecedented series of more than 600 avalanches that destroyed communities and claimed hundreds of lives—served as the blueprint for our setting’s extreme environmental pressure and isolation. We expanded that localized disaster into a global, irreversible climate event. However, the true brilliance of our game lies in blending this grim setting with the Cozy Tycoon genre. You’re not a military commander—you’re a caretaker. The challenge isn’t large-scale conflict, but the intimate logistics of nurturing a small community. The Cozy Loop: The core gameplay loop centers on transforming meager resources into comfort. It’s about the small, gratifying triumphs—installing a simple heater in a freezing barrack, finding a rare seed packet to grow a modest crop, or constructing a communal kitchen to lift morale. Despite the harsh backdrop, the immediate sense of achievement that comes from watching your fragile settlement grow and thrive is deeply rewarding and relaxing. The Narrative: The story provides the emotional depth. It constantly challenges players to manage their tiny population’s morale and relationships, where small acts of kindness or cruelty—borrowing fuel, sharing medicine—carry lasting consequences. This harsh environment makes every “cozy” success feel genuinely earned. In short, the inspiration establishes the stakes and atmosphere, while the execution delivers a fulfilling, heartwarming building experience rooted in resilience and the simple comforts of survival.

At Above The Desk, we believe the trend with the greatest potential to become a foundational element in gaming’s future is the deep integration of Generative AI for runtime personalization and dynamic content creation. While AI is already transforming our development pipeline—accelerating asset creation and world generation—its true power lies in the runtime experience. We envision a future where games move beyond fixed narratives and scripted Non-Player Characters (NPCs). Instead, advanced, context-aware Generative AI will enable NPCs to converse, react, and remember player actions in truly emergent ways, creating personalized stories for every user that remain genuinely unpredictable. This evolution—from the traditional “illusion of choice” to dynamic, self-evolving worlds—will redefine player immersion and replayability, making game worlds feel truly alive. Supported by cloud infrastructure and increasingly powerful local processing, this capability promises the most significant leap in player agency since the introduction of open-world design.

At Above The Desk, we see the growing adoption of AI, AR, and VR as a pivotal trend that will profoundly shape the future of gaming. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already an essential part of our workflow today—automating asset generation and optimizing development processes—which allows us to focus on the unique aspects of our game, Above the Snow. We believe that, in the near future, AI will further personalize gameplay and enable significantly more realistic and autonomous NPCs. While not our current priority, we are closely observing immersive technologies: VR as a medium for deep, sensory-driven immersion, and AR for its ability to extend our game worlds beyond the desk, blending digital and physical environments. Although our immediate focus remains on delivering a high-quality PC and console title, we continue to explore and experiment with these frontiers. Developing an AR or VR project is firmly within our long-term roadmap to ensure that our studio remains forward-thinking and innovative.

We want players to experience the satisfaction of mastering a highly complex yet logical, systemic world. The environment in our game is unforgiving, and success isn’t determined by luck, but by deep understanding and clever manipulation of the rules. We hope players come away with an appreciation for the intricate interdependencies between temperature, wind, snow density, and human psychology—feeling genuinely accomplished when they anticipate a weather pattern or engineer a solution that leverages a subtle mechanic.

If players could take away just one message from Above the Snow, we hope it’s this: even under the harshest conditions, human connection is the fuel for extraordinary stories. We want players to understand that the most valuable resource isn’t food or fuel—it’s the strength found in human relationships. The game’s unforgiving environment strips away everything else, forcing survivors to depend entirely on one another. When resources are scarce and the moral costs are high, the choices you make—whom you choose to save, whom you trust, and how you preserve hope—create the game’s true narrative. The chilling backdrop of the Perpetual Winter exists to highlight how empathy, sacrifice, and shared resilience are the most powerful forces that drive meaningful human stories.

That’s a fun question—and it speaks directly to our core philosophy of combining tycoon management with rich storytelling. My personal dream project, which we may pursue once we’re more established, centers on the collision between the Renaissance and the era of the Spanish Inquisition. We’re deeply fascinated by that period and the extraordinary tension it embodies.

What’s Next for Above The Desk? Our main focus for the coming year is, of course, the successful launch of Above the Snow, followed by a robust post-release roadmap designed to support our community and keep the world engaging. At the same time, we’re already looking ahead. We remain fully committed to the genre blend that earned us recognition at the NYX Game Awards. We take pride in pioneering the “tycoon with an interesting story” model, and this genre will continue to be our creative home. I can share that our next project—set to enter full production after Above the Snow launches next year—will build on a similar, intriguing contrast: pairing a relaxing, deeply satisfying management core with a rich, unexpected narrative backdrop. We’re exploring another extreme environment or historical turning point rarely seen as a setting for a tycoon game. Whatever the theme, our next title will once again challenge players with meaningful moral choices while maintaining a cozy yet systemically complex gameplay loop. We’re ready to take the innovative genre we’ve developed and push it into entirely new territory.

The single biggest change we’ve observed since our studio was founded is the shift from a product-driven market to a discovery- and attention-driven service market. In simple terms, it’s the rise of the content creator economy and the growing necessity of adopting a Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) mindset—even for premium, single-player titles like our debut game, Above the Snow. In the past, developers focused solely on the polished final product; today, a game is an ongoing conversation. With millions of titles released digitally, every game must now compete for attention, not just sales. Our response to this change has been holistic: Designing for Streamability: We built Above the Snow with emergent, procedural, and visually striking gameplay moments designed to be shareable. The game generates unique, unscripted events that streamers will naturally want to broadcast, creating authentic, high-value exposure. Community as Our Marketing Team: We prioritize direct engagement with players and content creators well before launch. We see streamers and YouTubers as vital partners in the discovery process, offering them early access and tools to help showcase the game effectively. Retention over Transaction: Although Above the Snow is a premium title, we’ve developed a robust post-launch roadmap. We understand that even the best single-player experiences must give players a reason to return—not through aggressive monetization, but through new features, story updates, and community-driven content that keep the game alive in players’ libraries for the long term.

The secret to designing a game world that feels truly alive and immersive lies in focusing on emergent systems and the player’s agency within them. It’s not enough for a world to simply look beautiful—it must react to the player in unexpected yet logical ways. For Above the Snow, our core philosophy is built on two pillars: Systemic Interdependency: We design simple but interconnected systems that respond to one another without relying on rigid scripting. For example, the weather system—dynamic snow depth, wind chill, and ice formation—directly influences AI behavior (predators seeking shelter, NPCs adjusting patrol routes) and the player’s survival mechanics (tool efficiency, warmth levels). A single player action, like lighting a large fire, isn’t just a visual effect—it changes the local temperature, which may attract dangerous wildlife or melt the ice on a nearby path. This systemic depth ensures that every choice carries meaningful, ripple-like consequences. Uninterrupted Agency: We strive to minimize moments when control is taken away from the player. Immersion often breaks when gameplay yields to cutscenes or fixed paths. By anchoring the narrative entirely within the systemic world, we allow the player’s actions to drive the story—making them an active participant whose decisions truly matter, rather than a spectator following pre-written dialogue. In essence, we don’t try to handcraft every “living” moment; instead, we design the rules that allow the world to create those moments organically.

If Above The Desk could collaborate with one developer, it would be Larian Studios, the creators of Baldur’s Gate 3. Our choice stems from a deep alignment in game design philosophy: Larian has perfected the art of systemic depth, where simple elements—like fire, water, or elevation—interact to create complex, emergent solutions. This principle lies at the heart of our own vision of a “living world.” By combining their unparalleled expertise in dynamic narrative branching and player freedom—always saying “yes” to player creativity—with our focus on reactive survival mechanics and exploration, as seen in Above the Snow, we could create a next-generation RPG that offers players an unprecedented level of consequence and agency in an open world. Moreover, Larian’s steadfast commitment to quality and polish, even while achieving AAA-level success, resonates strongly with our studio’s ethos.

The single most important advice we at Above The Desk would give to an aspiring game developer is this: Don’t start by trying to make your dream game; start by finishing fifty small, terrible ones. The biggest challenge in game development isn’t mastering a tool like Unreal or Unity—it’s learning the process of completion. That means the grind of bug fixing, optimization, marketing, and the discipline of cutting features. Your first few projects will be rough, and many won’t get finished. What matters is quickly building the muscle memory for the full production lifecycle—from a blank screen to a “shipped” state, even if it’s just a free demo on itch.io. Scope down ruthlessly, use free assets, and focus on finishing simple concepts like a Pong clone or a basic platformer. By the time you begin your dream project, you’ll have not only the technical skill but also the endurance and discipline needed to see it through to completion.