First details pulled out from A Pocket Full of Slagford 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Upcoming point-and-click "bleak & barmy misadventure" unveiled for PC on Steam

Adventure games that let you collect loose inventory items are commonplace. Adventure games that let you pick up and carry around pieces of the world itself are few and far between. But that's exactly what we'll get to do in A Pocket Full of Slagford, an upcoming adventure from indie New Zealand-based developer SLUMPS.

The city of Slagford doesn't have the greatest reputation, as while "some call it The Backbone of the North, most call it proper sh*te." Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that they mine dung. Or DID, anyway, as the miners have "laid down their tools to take to the streets with picketed warfare." During their strike, a tragedy in the mines left a boy named Pip Bunting without a father and his family destitute in the "knife crime district," so the "wide-eyed little scamp" takes it upon himself to seek compensation. He gets far more than he bargained for, however, when he discovers "an otherworldly relic that grants an ability to tamper with reality." Now, with the city "coming apart at the seams" aboveground and "trouble a-brewin'" belowground, Pip finds himself caught up in the miner's strike and must use the power of his newfound "grubby amulet" to uncover what's really going on beneath the surface – and perhaps create "some accidental otherworldly problems along the way."

The developer describes the "proudly (and painstakingly) human made" A Pocket Full of Slagford as a mix of "Grim Fandango meets Terry Gilliam's Brazil." It's a heady claim but looks poised to deliver a "bleak and barmy misadventure," using a verb coin-style interface to send players "up monolithic megatowers, down dingy dung pits" and across a faux-British "industrial world with a morbid sense of humour." It's all presented in a lo-fi art style that recalls the "forgotten CD-ROM era 3D aesthetic," accompanied by a "soulful" score from Moniker, the musicians behind Hunt for the Wilderpeople. What really makes the game stand out, however, is its "world-bending picture puzzle mechanic" that is "inspired by classic point & clicks, though in many ways is a subversion of the genre." Instead of simply picking up objects, here players can copy "jigsaw-like pieces of the world" and paste them elsewhere on anything "with a matching shape" in order to manipulate the environment. The only way out of Slagford's mess (and possibly some of your own) is by capturing the right imprints and then "sticking them where they don’t belong."

It's too early for a release date just yet, but A Pocket Full of Slagford can now be wishlisted on Steam, with a demo expected sometime prior to launch on Windows PC. 

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