On the 5th of May I interviewed Jared Gerritzen, lead game designer for Zombie Studios on the production of Black Light: Tango Down - a new digital download only first person shooter hitting vendors around July.

Tell us a bit about yourself and the work you’ve done on BL:TD

I am the project lead and lead game designer on black light, I design the weapons and the mechanics of it (with the help of everyone else) - I guess you could say I am the director of the movie. The cast are the guys who give the ideas but I am the guy who finalizes it all.

You’ve mentioned on the website that Black Light: Tango Down is based on “science-fact”, what advantages do you feel you have basing this game on fact?

The whole science-fact term (which I am not sure if I like that it has caught on this way), is the idea that it is realistic to you. It is not this giant thing floating 45 feet over the world and does not have any propulsion which does not make sense to you. It is the uncanny valley – I think it’s cooler when you can imagine being in that world. When you can say “I recognise this building but there are a few parts that are new to me”.

How did you come to the idea of hyper-reality vision in the game?

We are always looking at these new crazy things that are coming out in popular science and military magazines. We were out drinking one night and I remember someone showed me an iPhone or Android application where you could look around with your phone and it would give you up-to-date information on where everything is. So we thought “God, wouldn’t that be great if that was in a game and it showed you where everyone was”.