Dordogne Review: A Half-Remembered Story, Short on Warmth but Beautifully Rendered

For a self-described “narrative game,” Dordogne’s narrative isn’t all that compelling. Luckily, in games as in most mediums, narrative rarely has to do all the heavy lifting. And while it scarcely offers much in the way of mechanical flair, Dordogne does at least have a trick up its sleeve in the form of its lush, unmatched watercolor visuals.

The story follows a young woman named Mimi as she investigates the home of her recently deceased grandmother, and against the explicit demands of her father (an unrelenting asshole from start to finish). The twist is that, due to some mysterious traumatic event, Mimi’s recollections of her grandmother have been almost entirely erased, making this whole investigation as much about restoring her own memory as anything else.

Along the way, you’ll track down old letters, photos, and tapes that outline Dordogne’s cast of characters. Occasionally, these tidbits will trigger Mimi’s memories, thereby thrusting you into the past to play as a younger Mimi on summer vacation at her grandmother’s. This delivery method is routine, but the simple puzzles and minigames scattered along the way add a touch of intimacy to the depiction of the titular southwest region of France.

But the game’s initial mystery—why does Mimi’s father hate her grandmother?—never really hooks you. There are more compelling questions that are raised along the way to solving this mystery, but these don’t pick up much momentum until Dordogne’s back half. Also, the game’s half dozen or so characters are barely fleshed out, meaning that you’ll likely finish the campaign feeling about as distant from them as Mimi did when she couldn’t even remember them.

Around the halfway point, the unanswered questions do begin to pile up, coalescing slowly at first into anxiety, then suddenly into an undercurrent of dread that propels you toward the conclusion, which isn’t particularly satisfying, poignant, or even all that memorable. But if Dordogne’s story is a letdown, there’s at least a bit of redemption in the visual style.

There are few, if any, games rendered in such vibrant watercolor, and considering Dordogne’s sentimental attachment to its locations, it’s appropriate that they spring to life as vividly as they do. And the art style is especially notable in sequences that feature more movement, from your pushing through a crowd in a bustling market, to your scrambling up the side of a precarious cliff, to your paddling down the peaceful Dordogne river. In motion, the wobbly linework and sparsity bordering on incompleteness are at their most immediate and surprising.

It’s tempting to call it a shame—a waste, even—that a game that looks so unlike any other doesn’t have much going for it in the way of dialogue or character study. But, then, stories aren’t just limited to the things people say. And, of course, a story centered on the tenuous nature of human memory would be messier than that—rendered in imprecise arrays, interrupted by blank space, and framed in rough edges. Which is to say, a bit like watercolor.

This game was reviewed with code provided by Player Two.