I’ve had the pleasure of playing a number of games with beautiful art styles this year, but none of them have been quite as beautiful as Dordogne. In the adventure puzzle game co-developed by UMANIMATION and UN JE NE SAIS QUOI, and published by Focus Home Interactive, the titular region of Dordogne is realized with the help of stunning hand-painted watercolor environments.
In Dordogne you play Mimi, a 32-year-old woman who decides to go back to her recently deceased grandmother’s home after receiving a letter informing Mimi about the tragic death. It’s a place she hasn’t visited in a while due to her father deciding to cut ties with her grandparents many years ago. The weird thing is, Mimi doesn’t remember what happened that summer that led to her father’s decision. It must’ve been big to cause such a divide in the family, but she just can’t recall any memories from back then. She heads back to the countryside to hopefully find the answers she needs to leave all of that behind her once and for all.
Dordogne is split into two parts. One part is what I have described so far. It’s an adult Mimi going back to Dordogne and exploring the house in hopes of rediscovering what happened all those years ago. The other part are those memories. When Mimi finds an object that carries a particular importance to the events that unfolded over 20 years ago, we get a flashback. We still play as Mimi, but now a 10-year-old version of her, who’s visiting her grandma over the holidays.
The mood between the two times is noticeably different. In the present day, it’s raining, the colors are muted, you’re alone, and you keep getting texts from home reminding you of your broken relationship with what should be the most important people in your life. The past is the opposite. The sun is shining, the colors are vibrant, and Mimi is filled with excitement and looking for new adventures wherever she goes. Here is where the art style really comes to shine, as the renditions of the environments are absolutely stunning and truly come to life through the watercolor paintings.
The music in Dordogne is rather lowkey, but it accompanies the visuals quite well. Some tracks highlight the serenity of the nature around you with beautiful strings, while others evoke the sound typically associated with a French riverside town by adding an accordion into the mix. It does its job to create the mood of the respective locations, but I doubt you will remember it once you’ve completed your journey. The one exception is a fun jingle that reoccurs multiple times throughout the game and creates a memorable motive for the story.
What Dordogne captures so beautifully is that childish excitement. Mimi doesn’t understand the world yet, but she’s eager to find out how it works. Every chance to learn something, to discover something new, to go on a little adventure, she takes. This is wonderfully represented in the gameplay. As you explore the landscapes of Dordogne, you will take pictures, record sounds, find little stickers, and (most importantly) make memories. At the end of every chapter, you’re then asked to create a little journal page with the things you find on your adventures, even creating a poem inspired by the moments that had the most impact on you. These don’t have to be big moments. It can be the view of the town when you were on top of the mountain, or the air balloons you saw in the sky during your kayak trip, or anything else.
On top of just traversing the beautiful world, you also do a lot of puzzles in Dordogne. These aren’t difficult by any means, most of them are very straightforward and more about the process than the challenge. Because what it does is it forces you to interact intimately with those objects that carry so much meaning, and in their own way represent important memories. And similar to those small moments and little adventures I talked about before, by themselves, none of these might be of particular importance, but once you bring them all together, it creates a formative experience for a child that you would never forget. Except Mimi did forget.
This dichotomy between past and present is never lost in Dordogne. No matter how beautiful that summer might have been, it always comes with a reminder that these days have passed, and that this grandma that we once loved so much is not with us anymore.
Dordogne is a small but important story. It’s a reminder of that naivety and boundless imagination you carried everywhere with you when you were young. It’s a reminder to take a break and take in the world around you once every while. It’s a reminder to foster the relationships with the people you care about before it’s too late, just as much as it’s a reminder to cut the people out of your life that don’t deserve being in it. But most of all, it’s a reminder of how much importance a single summer can carry, especially when you’re a child.
Nairon played Dordogne on PC with a review copy. Dordogne is also available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and the Xbox Series.
