🍪 Dialogz: Leszek Górniak, Lore Loyalist and Immersive Sim Defender
Some developers move through the industry collecting job titles. Others collect design philosophies.
Leszek GĂłrniak somehow does both at once. He has been a designer, programmer, composer, and the guy brave enough to ask the questions everyone else avoids.
His path runs through TEYON, Bloober Team, Flying Wild Hog and now The Astronauts. It’s a mix of licensed sci fi, psychological horror, multiplayer chaos and the atmospheric world of Witchfire.
This interview shows exactly why his perspective matters.
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Respect the Lore
Leszek’s biggest lesson from working on Terminator and RoboCop is simple.
Lore is not decoration. Lore is law.
He put it bluntly:
“Respect the lore. Unconditional respect is one of the key reasons for the positive reception of both games.”
This carries into original IPs too. You either start with a world that makes sense or you build mechanics so strong that the world bends around them. There is no floating in the middle.
🦊 Kiki: Every time a studio breaks lore, a fan loses a few years of life expectancy. Respecting the world you’re working in shouldn’t be revolutionary, yet here we are. Nice to see someone treat it like the spine, not a sticker.
🍪 Chip makes a tiny gasp of respect.
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Questions Solve More Than Opinions
Leszek’s design philosophy is “question driven.” And his example is perfect.
A designer once proposed that players should not be able to shoot until they used a voice warning like “Drop the gun.” Realistic? Maybe. Fun? Absolutely not.
Instead of arguing, he asked one question.
“With this restriction, how would the player do a stealth attack?”
They had no answer.
Feature removed.
Meeting saved.
🦊 Kiki: Realism is great until it punches the game in the face. This is why questions are better than debates. They expose the nonsense faster than any spreadsheet.
🍪 Chip pretends to whisper: Please do not yell at the enemies before stabbing them.
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The Composer Who Designs Systems
Leszek has done design and music, and he doesn’t separate the two.
“To compose for games, you compose around gameplay.”
It sounds obvious but few people can actually do it well.
His experience let him build layered music systems where tracks shift based on gameplay events. Normally this requires three departments and a prayer. He handled it himself because he understood both sides.
🦊 Kiki: Imagine fixing your own feature because you speak two languages: Design and Music. Most studios need four meetings to do what he described in one sentence.
🍪 Chip vibrates softly to imaginary layered music.
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Big Studios, Small Teams, and the Creativity Gap
Leszek has seen both ends of the studio spectrum.
The differences that matter most:
1. Specialization. Big teams break tasks into microscopic pieces. Small teams let you touch everything.
2. Motivation. Small teams act faster and stay sharper. Big teams need management, structure and reminders that the game still exists.
Neither is good or bad. They simply shape the kind of developer you become.
🦊 Kiki: The bigger the team, the more time you spend deciding who owns what rather than actually making the thing. This is why small teams feel like pirate ships. Big teams feel like cruise liners.
🍪 Chip raises tiny cookie arm. Wants to be on pirate ship.
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The Moment He Really Asked “Who Approved This”
Every dev has lived this.
Leszek found a dynamic difficulty system that everyone disliked. He asked leads, designers, coworkers. Not a single person defended it.
Yet it shipped.
He learned the core problem.
Every feature needs an owner.
If no one owns it, everyone loses.
🦊 Kiki: This is the game dev version of “Who left the stove on.” And the answer is always “nobody,” which is exactly why things burn.
🍪 Chip smells smoke.
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Being Confident in the Unknown
Leszek doesn’t pretend to have certainty.
“I don’t. And I don’t think any game developer should.”
He evaluates features through the game’s core pillars and playtests heavily. But he doesn’t chase guaranteed outcomes. He chases evidence.
🦊 Kiki: Finally someone admits it. No one knows anything until players break the build. That’s game design in one sentence.
🍪 Chip takes notes nervously.
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Witchfire and the High Bar
Leszek has only been at The Astronauts for six months, but the challenge is already clear.
He’s surrounded by veterans and the bar for quality is way up in the mountains.
He’s not claiming victories yet. He’s climbing.
🦊 Kiki: Joining a veteran studio is like joining a kitchen full of chefs who can smell a weak idea from the hallway. Sink or swim time.
🍪 Chip make dog paddles in imaginary water.
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What Makes Polish Game Design Polish
Leszek gave two defining traits.
1. Story has weight. Polish studios obsess over narrative.
2. They experiment. Even the indies. Carrion is his favorite example: a platformer where you are a tentacle monster.
🦊 Kiki: Polish devs are allergic to boring ideas. Story first, comfort zone never. Works every time.
🍪 Chip wiggles like a small tentacle monster.
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The Dream Game: Immersive Sims Are Not Dead
Leszek wants to build an open world action RPG with strong immersive sim elements. He loves Deus Ex and hates that the genre is essentially missing from the market.
He wants to revive it.
🦊 Kiki: Every designer secretly wants to make Deus Ex 5. Leszek is just brave enough to say it out loud.
🍪 Chip has sparkly eyes. Tiny hope.
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Last bite
Leszek Górniak thinks like a builder, composes like a storyteller, questions like a scientist and works like someone who hasn’t stopped learning.
He respects worlds. He understands systems. He tests assumptions. He doesn’t pretend to have certainty. And he wants to resurrect one of the most ambitious genres gaming ever created.
A designer worth watching.
