Dordogne is the 14th selection of Year 2 of the UUGPGC! Finish by July 17, 2023! Spoilers Open!

Edit: Spoilers are now open!

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Welcome to the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. Our 13th game of 2023 is Dordogne. The target completion date is July 17, 2023.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after July 17, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You are also free to come back any time after the completion date and share your thoughts! This club is meant to be open to all whenever you want to join in the fun!

You can find out more about the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club or suggest future games for it here.

What is Dordogne?

A watercolor aesthetic adventure game where you explore the memories of a woman going back to her grandmother's home in Dordogne, France.

How long is Dordogne?

How long to beat lists it as 3.5 hours long.

I played through this couple weeks ago. Maybe I can chime in.

Remarkably beautiful game. It took me exactly 3.5 hours to wrap up the story. For others playing on Steam Deck, you might need to force Proton 7.0-6 for best compatibility.

So onto my thoughts…

On the positive side; the atmosphere of game felt reminiscent of Boku no Natsuyasumi or Unpacking. The game is dense with beautiful, memorable, and expressive style, at many times looking like a Studio Ghibli film (I keep thinking of Only Yesteday for whatever reason) or modern French animation.

In contrast, I found the gameplay rather shallow and at times frustrating; something akin to Heavy Rain… “Pick up key, move key, put key in door, turn key, push door”... but perhaps the experience Un Je Ne Sais Quoi aims to convey here is less about the game mechanics, and more to emphasize their story and a particular feeling.

Overall I found Dordogne to be a charming, beautiful, although largely short lived experience.

@iphone_tyler: Thanks for the tip. I may just play this on Steam Deck.

Beautiful presentation on this one. Really enjoyed the art, the music, the voice acting. The perfect length for a game with light complexity in the game mechanics.

I felt the ending was a bummer and maybe a little rushed?

Overall, great game that I'm glad I played.

@jimithing83 said:

My casual (mostly uninformed) impression has been that a lot of these indie games releasing right to Game Pass tend to front load a stylish and polished first few hours of gameplay, perhaps at the expense of a fulfilling payoff or lasting appeal. I'm sure there are a billion counterexamples but aside from Dordogne, I felt the same about Tinykin, Slime Rancher 2, The Gunk, and Sable. I wonder if it's an artifact of how Game Pass games get funded and scheduled... or maybe this is just how it's always been and Game Pass just helps these games get attention they wouldn't have in the past?

Spoilers are now open so let's discuss away.

I will add more later but I think this game's aesthetics carried it for me. The story wasn't bad, the gameplay was...close to visual novel levels of simplicity (there weren't "puzzles" so much as interactive tasks, and I would have liked it more with good puzzles) but the beautiful graphics and sound were enough to make me enjoy it. The characters were all relatively likable too.

I found this game to be fine. The music and visuals definitely carried it, as every game mechanic seemed to be just there to give the player something to do between story beats. Like others in the thread, I think the ending was the weakest bit. It felt like the whole story depended on the event at the end of the trip, and then the event just kind of happens, there's a quick epilogue and then game ends.

I'm not sure if it's because I don't have kids of my own or what, but the overall story just didn't quite land for me. There were so many letters I found as an adult Mimi that led to me believe that whatever happened kinda was the "straw that broke the camel's back" for why your dad and grandparents don't talk anymore, and I guess I just had built up us seeing more of that conversation happening, than just seeing Mimi almost drowned.

As for gameplay, it really reminded me of a stripped down Seasons: A Letter to the Future (a game nowhere near enough people played). I was a little annoyed that I could only choose one of each element per page, and that photographs could only be taken in very specific spots. It led to me sometimes only having one photo to use but 9 stickers or something. But I could still only put one sticker on the page which then meant my pages had these big empty areas. Overall, not a huge deal, but I barely spent time making pages outside of when the game forces you to because of that.

All in all, it's a simple 3/5 for me. Easy to recommend to people who just want a story told to them or who don't often play games and want to see how the medium can vary.

So now that any straggler have had a chance to catch up I am going to be a little more specific with my spoilers.

I think that the fundamental problem that this game has (besides not having much gameplay, which is more of a choice than a problem) is that it fundamentally misunderstands what its most interesting relationships are. Mimi's relationship with Nora is actually pretty simple. At the beginning it seems like there might be some big secret behind it but no, Fabrice just kept her away after a certain time. Mimi's relatiionship with Renaud is even simpler. They're just kids.

Every other relationship in the game is more complex. Nora's relationship with Fabrice. Mimi's relationship with Fabrice. Renaud's relationship with Edouard. But all those relationships are restricted to texts and hints and never resolve. There's clearly a lot of complexity there and the game just sort of moves past it to tell a simple story. And then in the end Mimi just moves into her grandmother's house as if to say "yes you can run away from your problems back to your childhood! It's fun and easy!"

If it wanted to tell a simple story of a girl and her grandmother it could have. If it wanted to tell more complex stories about families and shades of gray it could have. Instead it situates the simple story within the more complicated one and then only tells the simple one, and it's fundamentally unsatisfying.

That being said the simple story is fine for what it is and the game looks nice and sounds nice and is pleasant enough. But it promises way more than it delivers. I don't knoe if the Fabrice stuff was added in after the bulk of development to flesh out the characters or what, but it really ends up taking away from the game.

I still enjoyed it but I don't understand the storytelling deciions.