A Quick Q&A with Sam Mullen, Associate Producer and David Bruno, Public Relations with Sega of America.

Electric Playground: What’s the deal with Rise of Nightmares?

Sam Mullen: Rise of Nightmares is the first real mature, story-driven Kinect game. A melee, monster-bashing, haunted house exploration masterpiece!

EP: What games were you inspired by? I noticed similarities in Rise of Nightmares to Resident Evil, Silent Hill…

SM: Horror-based videogames go way back, so eventually there’s going to be some over-lap. Being that it’s a Kinect game, there’s a lot going on in here that’s never been done before.

David Bruno: You’re literally kicking, cutting, slicing, dicing, mincing everything undead. And other creatures for that matter.

EP: The game lets you run around and fight and that’s a lot of sophisticated movement for Kinect. How did you pull it off?

SM: A lot of hard work. Prototyping, testing, retesting, retesting and a lot of tuning. Getting the controls to where they’re at in this game is one of the most challenging things in this project. We did a lot of work to make sure we got it right.

EP: Will this game scare the crap out of us?

DB: There were a couple of times when I jumped when I passed by a door and the undead grabbed me. You jump in your skin a bit. I don’t think it’s to the point of Silent Hill-type horror, it’s more of a gorefest. A gore-filled hack n’ slash.

EP: How long is the game?

SM: Your first time through, playing on normal difficulty, probably 8 or 9 hours.

EP: There’s a hardcore mode?

SM: Oh yeah. It’s called “Torture” mode.

EP: What’s so torturous about it?

DR: You get crowded fast. When there’s a lot of undead around you, the best thing to do is kick, because they’ll all push back and they’ll collide with one another, giving you time to regain health. It gets pretty frantic. Luckily we have chainsaws, drills and all sorts of crazy weapons to turn them into fine red mist.

Rise of Nightmares will be out for Xbox 360 on September 6, 2011.

-Interview by Jason MacIsaac