➤ Dordogne, the review of a French narrative adventure painted in watercolor 🕹

Mimi reconstructs her childhood by traveling between the past and the present, but her adventures on the banks of the Dordogne are less surprising than we expected.

Dordogne is one of those productions capable of being immediately engraved in the viewer's mind thanks to its distinctive and particular artistic style: Cédric Babouche's watercolors skilfully outline the French countryside, its colors and its peculiarities as the weather changes, all of it. accompanied by the quiet sound. of the Dordogne River, which runs through the setting of the video game Animation e A je-ne-sais-quoi. Mimi, a thirty-something struggling with the death of her grandmother and a past marred by mysterious amnesia, is called to move to these places and rediscover her own history, as well as that of her family.

It's a shame that excellent artistic direction is not accompanied by equally effective gameplay and, in the end, even the story of Dordogne, after an excellent premise, turns out to be impalpable, inconsistent, like a thin sheet of paper at the mercy. of a downpour. Of course, some interesting intuitions remain, but Dordogne is not able to carry out its excellent premises with conviction.

We tell you in detail in ours. Dordogne review.

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Dordogne, the review of a French narrative adventure painted in watercolor — Dordogne's artistic direction, all outlined in watercolor, remains in print

We said that Mimi does not remember anything about her past, and specifically she has no memories of what happened to her before she turned thirteen. In it grandmother's death, she feels called to the country house of the deceased, who lived in the splendid and sunny area Dordoña. Despite the hostile reaction of her father - who, for reasons that will never be fully clarified, harbored a strong resentment towards her mother - Mimi leaves the city to throw herself headlong into this completely different environment, endowed with its own rhythms. , capable of returning her to her past and making her rediscover, little by little, some significant events from her childhood.

All this happens throughinteraction through particular objects; In each of the chapters of the adventure, which lasts between four and five hours, even the most banal household utensils manage to upset the protagonist's mind and project her into the past, in which we will have to move through the different scenarios of the campaign and get to meet the cast of the adventure. It is a shame that the different spaces, although wonderfully delimited, watercolor, with a truly unmistakable and successful style, soon end up repeating themselves over and over again, severely limiting the player's sense of wonder and discovery. Even some stereotypical representations of the secondary characters would have deserved a revision, or at least more careful reflection: the figure of the thief, in particular, is completely unfortunate from this point of view.

In general, the Dordogne plot expires soon in the most complete manner. predictability, and not even in the end is there any authentic participation in Mimi's adventures and the lessons that the young woman draws from this immersion in her past. Dordogne is unexpectedly cold, unfocused in its narrative choices, and full of dark points about aspects of the plot that, if explored in depth, would perhaps have led to a different outcome and a greater attachment to Mimi. and the co-stars of the adventure.

Drawings, photographs, recordings, poems.

Already in our trial for Dordogne we had established a parallel between the French production in question and the Canadian production of SEASON: A letter to the future, released just a few months ago. Exactly as in Season, the protagonist Mimi finds herself, as a child, composing the pages of a collector, made up of poems, photographs, stickers and audio recordings. The idea is excellent, at least in principle, but the implementation is much less free and "open" than what was seen in SEASON: it is not possible to insert more than one element per page for each of the categories listed above, and in the end of the process one feels more obligated than anything by the folder and the mechanics that involve it, unfortunately incapable of making the players feel like true authors of their memories in this Dordogne video game. The limited customization options on the folder pages mean that the collectibles that Mimi can find during exploration become meaningless: what's the point of collecting a bunch of stickers in the various stages if, at the end of the fair, you can only use one? for each chapter?

In addition to collect memories To be transmitted to the future, Mimi will find herself playing a series of mini-games that will intersperse the most distinctive narrative phases: kayaking in the Dordogne, fishing for hairpins lost in the river during a picnic, shopping at the market. , aromatic plantations and much more. It's all very simple, and the interactions are not always precise and meaningful in the adventure economy as a whole; Even from this point of view, the Dordogne seemed to us quite elementary and far from unforgettable.

An English dubbing of mixed quality (the French is definitely better) and a translation of the texts and dialogues into English do not help. Spanish Language unfortunately peppered with some unpleasant oversights. Dordogne is, in short, not very refined, not even from the point of view of music and sound design as a whole.

Conclusions

Tested version Nintendo Switch digital delivery Nintendo eShop Price 19.99 € Holygamerz.com 6.5 Readers (5) 6.6 your vote

Dordogne had enchanted us with his splendid watercolors, capable of fully representing the open, sunny and carefree spirit of the southwestern French countryside, cradled by the calm and calm waters of the Dordogne River. Unfortunately, however, Mimi's adventures turned out to be very boring, both from a plot point of view (generally forgettable) and from a playable point of view, limited to mini-games of average quality and not at all high. Dordogne's message fails to reach the player's heart loud and clear, also due to the decision to take advantage of some now outdated stereotypes in the writing of some characters. We cannot define Dordogne as insufficient, of course, but we would have expected much more from a video game that really seemed to have a lot to say, at least on paper, turning out in the end to be an unexpectedly dry inspirational production. and repetitive in execution.