A Pocket Full of Slagford – a retro-futurist take on Thatcher-era northern England
A New Zealand-based artist, Patrick Grant, is developing A Pocket Full of Slagford, a retro-styled 3D puzzle adventure game set in a surreal, near-future version of northern England still gripped by Thatcherism. Grant, who was born in Australia and has never actually lived in the north of England, drew his inspiration from British television he watched growing up, particularly the 1980s BBC drama Boys from the Blackstuff. The game blends comedy and social commentary, touching on themes of wealth disparity and class conflict without setting out to make an overt political statement.
Under his solo studio Slumps, Grant designed the game as an homage to classic 1980s and 1990s point-and-click adventures such as those made by LucasArts and Grim Fandango, while trying to avoid the genre's repetitive tropes. Players control a young Slagford local, Pip Bunting, who gains a mysterious relic and must navigate a decaying industrial world by collecting and placing "imprints" of the scenery to solve puzzles, in a style Grant calls a "jigsaw sticker book". The game also emulates the CD-Rom era's rendered backgrounds and rough 3D models, and Grant reimagines Thatcher-era coal mining as digging up excrement instead. A Pocket Full of Slagford is in development for PC, with no release date confirmed yet.
- New game imagines a Thatcher-era north of England that never ended
- Solo developer Patrick Grant drew inspiration from British TV, despite never living there
- Blends point-and-click puzzles with social commentary; no PC release date set yet
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Northern England was heavily shaped by coal mining and other industries, which provided work for generations of communities. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s government pursued policies that reduced the role of state-owned industries, and many coal mines closed after a prolonged miners’ strike.
Boys from the Blackstuff was a BBC drama about unemployed men in Liverpool during that period, and it helped shape Patrick Grant’s view of northern England despite his having never lived there. His game draws on that television history and on older point-and-click adventures, a style in which players solve puzzles by exploring scenes and using objects.
The imagined town of Slagford turns industrial decline into a surreal setting, with humour alongside themes of class and unequal wealth. Its version of mining replaces coal with excrement, while players use pieces of scenery to solve puzzles.
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