Recently, Focus Entertainment invited us to spend an hour trying our hand at Dordogne, the future narrative adventure game by Cédric Babouche and his team at UN JE NE SAIS QUOI. Subsidiary of the UMANIMATION group since 2021 after its acquisition, the French studio continues to work on this unique odyssey that the Dordogne will offer us and that will be available this year.
Test conditions: The game was tested on the PC for one hour and played on the controller. All images on this page were provided to us by the publisher as we were not authorized to take images ourselves. I feel sorry for you because the game is beautiful!
In time, aren’t all memories good?
Childhood. That dreamtime where every discovery is magical, every journey is an expedition to the end of the world, and every surprise or fear will leave an unforgettable memory. The context doesn’t matter, but… Too many elements fade away in our childhood memories. Our memory, altered by our ignorance and our perception of time, tends to distort reality and sometimes hides large parts of it. When circumstances come into play, whole sections of our lives can disappear…unless the conditions are in place for memories to emerge. That is the logic of the Dordogne.
If the demo we were able to try is set on the first two chapters of the game, it still shows what it’s all about very quickly. Mimi, our heroine, drives to the Dordogne to visit the house of her recently deceased grandmother Nora one last time. Her father, at odds with his own parents, doesn’t want her to go there and hires moving companies to vacate the old building quickly. But a letter that Nora addresses directly to Mimi will pique her curiosity and urge her to start the journey. To hell with the father, time is running out, towards the Dordogne!
Arriving at the crime scene, Mimi must inspect her grandparents’ house in search of clues, and this is where the title takes an unexpected turn. The surfacing memories of a discovery, however small, will allow him to relive episodes from his childhood. Dropped off twenty years ago by her parents on holiday with her grandmother when she has no desire (and no memories as an adult), Mimi will relive her adventures through us in this magnificent setting, the Dordogne. . And why not quickly understand the origin of the family quarrel and perhaps explain why she has no memories even before her thirteenth birthday.
Exploration and scrapbooking
This is how all the chapters reveal themselves from the little that we have been able to discover. We begin with a research phase in adulthood until we find the right trigger, and then flash back to childhood. The puzzles so far are not very complex (although this is just the beginning of the game), even if the joystick handling is sometimes not optimal and certain manipulations are dangerous. A small flaw that is quickly forgotten given the multitude of actions to be carried out and in particular the graphic journey that the Dordogne invites us to take.
This title is unusually great! The mix of handcrafted, watercolored 2D backgrounds and perfectly matched 3D characters hits the mark. We are immediately transported to this calm, colorful and contemplative universe. Forget your rocket launchers, Dordogne is in a whole different category. The small discoveries you collect during your adventures can be collected in a binder once discovered. Map, photo album, collection of stickers… this folder will accompany you through the adventure and will be an unshakable witness to your little treasures. If you’ve ever asked yourself the eternal question, “VF full or not?” » Yes, the game will be fully available in French. If the dialogues are not all played orally but appear in the form of bubbles, those that we could hear at the end of some important scenes have been perfectly interpreted.
Might as well cut it short if it wasn’t already clear, Dordogne really caught our eye. Supported by great graphics and a French version worthy of the name, the next title of UN JE NE SAIS QUOI is eagerly awaited by the editors. Dordogne will land on your screens on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Playstation 5, Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch in Spring 2023.