Nils Ryborg discusses the inspiration for “Stairs,†a wonderfully scary new first-person adventure title from Digital Tribe Games and Greylight Entertainment. Already hailed as a scariest by famous YouTubers the likes of Markiplier, ProJared and PewDiePie, it may be one of the biggest indie releases of 2015.
“Stairs†is currently set for a Sept. 28 release on Steam.
Nils Ryborg: The game was primarily inspired by three real life events, the first would be the Fritzl case, a horrible story about an austrian man locking his daughter in his basement for 24 years, repeatedly raping and abusing her and forcing her to bear three of his children. Second would be the Donner Party, this was a group of pioneers back in 1846 who tried to cross Sierra Nevada during winter. Sadly they were blocked by the snow, desperate and running out of food they actually resorted to cannibalism, eating each other for survival. The last event we took inspiration from was the Jonestown massacre. In this case the reverend Jim Warren Jones had created cult around himself and fled to south america. This worked out for him for a while, until the family of several cult members badgered a US congressman to traveling over there to check on the people in the cult. Noticing things were afoot the congressman took some of the cult members, who were willing to defect, with him toward the airport, where he was gunned down. Realizing the game was over, Jim Jones then convinced the entirety of the cult to commit a mass suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid en masse. The rather famous tape that recorded the speech convincing everyone to die is available here.
Continue Reading This Article From Review Fix Editor-In-Chief Patrick Hickey Jr. at Examiner.com
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports.
Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders.
His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023.
Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief.
Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale.
Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.
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