Spanish developer Tequila Works has released the first developer diary for its debut effort, Deadlight. In the diary, CEO & Creative Director Raúl Rubio is joined by Narrative Director Antonio Rojano to explain why the decision was made to set the game in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. “Tequila kept two key concepts in mind,” says Rojano of how the team approached development of this summer’s run-for-your-life zombie game. “One that it was to be a game about zombies and two, that it had to take place in the [1980s].”

Despite the development studio being based in Madrid, the team settled on the United States as the home for player-character Randall Wayne’s adventures because the locales there were home to many of the books, comics, games and movies from which the team drew inspiration and are therefore easily recognizable to audiences around the globe thanks to being heavily featured in media.

XBLA Fans previously caught up with Rubio at PAX East, at which time he also touched upon some of the reasoning behind Deadlight‘s setting and a few of its sources of inspiration. The developer diary does a nice job of expanding on those points and offers some brief behind-the-scenes glimpses of Tequila’s level design work.