Jessica Curry and Dan Pinchbeck, founders of the BAFTA-winning studio The Chinese Room are back with a new game project. Margot’s Heart sees the couple returning to their arthouse roots.
Out in the Thames Estuary, roughly seven miles off the coast of Kent, stand the remains of the Maunsell sea forts. Built as anti-aircraft installations in the Second World War, the structures briefly homed pirate radio stations in the 1960s and 70s but have been abandoned and unoccupied since.
Someone has marooned themselves on the forts: searching for something, hiding from something. The history of these lonely derelicts immerses them. Stories of cursed whales, downed bombers, suicide and isolation, drowning and resuscitation, childhood guilt and the burdens of responsibilities pass through the structures in eerie and undefinable waves.
Reality collapses and reforms in abstract transitions, moves freely from image to image, through space and time and history without constraints. The secrets of a life are dredged to the surface; they ebb and flow and leave empty bottles and abandoned dog-tags behind in the silt.
Margot’s Heart is an experimental game that plays with abstract, shifting story and symbolism. It returns Curry and Pinchbeck to the tonal poetics of Dear Esther, doing what they do best: creating atmospheric, unsettling stories of isolation and redemption.
