Marges Destimbats is a short interactive non-fiction documentary videogame about crumbling stone-wall terraces in an olive orchard near Deltebre, Spain.

Josep Bertomeu i Mercè (born in 1935) is my grandfather. He was born during the Second Spanish Republic, and grew up during the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. He comes from a family of peasants in the Ebro delta.

He asked me to come along and help him at the olive orchard...

Crèdits

About

This short game was made for Sant Jordi Jam 2026, recorded April 4th and April 18th 2026 in the mountains near Deltebre, roughly near coordinates (40.785795, 0.637862), and developed between April 1st to April 22nd.

The project was inspired by my (Ferran's) memories of fixing crumbled down dry-stone walls when I was younger with my grandfather, and the unwritten thoughts that work produced in me, as well as the conversations with my grandfather, who has always been great at telling stories in inspiring ways.

In a first for any of my projects, this game development involved much of my family: My grandfather José, my grandmother Neus, my father Josep Carles, my mother Rosa Mari, my cousin Mireia and my sister Carla.

I am currently not living anywhere near my family, so we coordinated the recording date, and arranged a phone video call during recording, where I interviewed my grandfather. He is a good actor, and after a short explanation he answered my questions about the olive tree orchards and our work. Special thanks goes to my father for managing the recording, camera and directing all the videos.

My father has a good library of VCR videos of our childhood. He recorded and documented our growth and our interactions with our family and the world as we grew up. The existence of these videos has inspired to try to recreate in documentary form my grandfather's words, knowledge and stories.

My grandfather studied as much as he had the chance, coming from a family of rice-farmers, and became a notary, eventually working at a bank and getting involved in the local rice-farming coop. After he retired, he has been very active in the local community, founding a theater group, Delta Teatre, writing books and plays, performing, as well as helping manage the local charity. Needless to say, he has been a big influence in my life and someone I've always looked up to.

My grandmother Neus gave birth to 8 children, and we are 12 cousins. My grandparents helped raise us all up often throughout our childhoods, and we've had the luck of sharing countless hours, of both work and play, toguether with them.

I've spent many days in the olive orchard that they used to own in these mountains. Much to their sadness, they sold their olive trees some years ago because they couldn't keep up with the work at their age, so for this game we recreated a time where we would go toguether to work at the olive orchard.

The only fiction in this game is the fact that my grandparents don't own an olive orchard anymore.

If you'd like to help translate the game to another language, please get in touch with me!