One of my earliest memories of childhood is going to a nearby art museum with my mom. She was an art student in school, and throughout my childhood she loved to share her passion for art with my brother and me, so I spent many moments as a youth taking art classes and walking through galleries, looking at beautiful pieces of art. My mom especially loves watercolors, so playing through Dordogne felt, very appropriately, like a trip back to my own childhood.

Dordogne is a story of remembrance, of revisiting the good and bad of childhood. The game follows Mimi, a French woman in her early 30s, visiting her recently passed grandmother’s home to look for a box of items left behind for her. In doing so, she is piecing together her fragmented memories of a summer 20 years before that they spent together in this house in the French countryside, along the Dordogne river. The game takes place over eight chapters, going back and forth in time as you experience young Mimi’s summer and adult Mimi connecting the dots about a past she had forgotten.

The most immediately stunning aspect is the art style, which is a loose watercolor aesthetic that makes this an incredibly beautiful game to play through. Wandering through this depiction of the French countryside is a joy, with every piece of scenery a visual treat. Early on you get a camera to take photos with as young Mimi, and I could have played and enjoyed a game of just capturing these moments. I’m especially fond of any moments near the river, which involves some gorgeous reflections, but this entire game is aesthetically pleasing from start to finish. Beyond that, though, the presentation of the entire game is wonderful. The music is understated but fits every scene perfectly, and the audio effects are sublime.

Gameplay is a bit harder to give full-throated praise, with certain aspects I enjoyed and certain aspects that I wish had gone back to the drawing board. One of the best parts of the game was making a scrapbook binder as young Mimi, ending most days with making a page of a photo, a sticker (picked up either while walking around or during events), and some poetry based off of words you encounter during your day. This leads to a great feeling of connection, allowing for some form of self-expression and making you connect directly to Mimi’s feelings and thoughts. However, throughout the rest of the gameplay there are a number of point-and-click elements that often felt more like a chore than anything else. At its worst it felt like Octodad, where you’re manipulating Mimi’s limbs to do a task (for example brushing her teeth), which doesn't have a narrative or emotional weight but isn’t engaging on a technical level either. While I appreciate certain elements of this interactivity, I wish there was a bit more thought to which scenes were shown and which parts were interactive, since certain elements work very well (not to spoil the story, but something came back late game that made me genuinely emotional).

While I did enjoy the story a lot, this also came with some caveats. The characters were very well written, with Mimi in particular being a great point of view character. The family conflict is also interesting, and I found myself propelled like Mimi to discover more. At times, however, I wish there was more to discover. The house you’re staying at and surrounding areas are beautiful and feel like there should be more to discover than there is. At the core there is this question of why Mimi lost her memory and why the family is estranged, the answer was so rushed that I was left wondering “is that it?” when the game came to a close. Other elements are more implied and not fully answered, which would be fine if there were more pieces to the story to put together. The pieces we had were great; the story as a whole just felt somewhat incomplete. I also should mention that throughout these various scenes the load times were much longer than they should be, which added to the flawed pacing.

Dordogne is an interesting, imperfect game with some phenomenal design and visuals. The watercolor graphics make for one of the most stunning games I’ve seen for a while, and some of the interactive choices worked incredibly well, such as the activity of putting photos and poems together to make the binder Mimi longs to rediscover. While there are certain areas of frustration, I ultimately enjoyed my time in exploring Mimi’s childhood memories (and my own) through art.