It’s been a while, but we have some big news for you today! You can now preorder the physical editions of Dordogne, including a Collector Edition and an exclusive artbook!
The beautiful Collector Edition ☀️
Dordogne’s Collector Edition includes the base game with a beautiful collector artbook, different from the one available alone, the mesmerizing original soundtrack of the game on a hand signed double vinyl, four lithographs, six stickers from the game and Mimi’s “SOUVENIRS” collector’s box. All these items also come from a certificate of authenticity, to ensure you're among the very few people to possess this incredible collector edition!
The splendid Artbook of Dordogne! 🎨
You can now preorder the superb artbook of Dordogne, which includes nearly 400 illustrations over 250 pages of this watercolour masterpiece. The artbook comes with characters, storyboards, paintings and amazing sets of Dordogne, but also with conceptual illustrations and researches not used in the final version of the game.
Dordogne offers a unique narrative experience through its heartwarming adventure, do not miss it!
Preorder the physical editions, available on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch here
Nominate us for the "Outstanding Visual Style" award 2023! Visual style doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity (though a noble goal in itself)… it describes a distinctive look and feel that suffuses an entire game.
Immerse yourself in a unique narrative experience, embarking on a vibrant journey that will awaken your senses and evoke warm memories.
Play as Mimi, exploring the precious recollections of your childhood and the times shared with your late grandmother. As past meets present, confront your adult choices with fond childhood memories to uncover lost family secrets.
Explore Dordogne landscapes of a thousand summer colors, within sumptuous hand-painted watercolor environments. During your adventure, recall the moments, the panoramas, the scents, the sounds, and the sensations. Recount these vivid memories in your journal as a recollection of Mimi’s family past that’s unique to your experience and a nostalgic, touching reflection of your journey.
Explore the stunning landscapes of Dordogne in hand-painted watercolors
Embark on a unique and heartwarming narrative experience
Awaken your senses as you explore childhood memories
Collect photos, sounds and scents to create your journal, unique to your adventure
Vote for Mimi at the Steam Awards!
Hello everyone!
It's been a while since the release of Dordogne, and we're delighted with your feedback on Mimi's unique journey. From the bottom of our hearts, many thanks for your sharing and feedback. ❤️
Help us keep our beautiful Dordogne thriving!
Nominate us for the "Outstanding Visual Style" award 2023! Visual style doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity (though a noble goal in itself)… it describes a distinctive look and feel that suffuses an entire game.
Immerse yourself in a unique narrative experience, embarking on a vibrant journey that will awaken your senses and evoke warm memories.
Play as Mimi, exploring the precious recollections of your childhood and the times shared with your late grandmother. As past meets present, confront your adult choices with fond childhood memories to uncover lost family secrets.
Explore Dordogne landscapes of a thousand summer colors, within sumptuous hand-painted watercolor environments. During your adventure, recall the moments, the panoramas, the scents, the sounds, and the sensations. Recount these vivid memories in your journal as a recollection of Mimi’s family past that’s unique to your experience and a nostalgic, touching reflection of your journey.
Explore the stunning landscapes of Dordogne in hand-painted watercolors
Embark on a unique and heartwarming narrative experience
Awaken your senses as you explore childhood memories
Collect photos, sounds and scents to create your journal, unique to your adventure
Chapter selection in Dordogne!
The wait is finally over... A brand new patch is now available on Dordogne, introducing CHAPTER SELECTION! 🎉
Whether you want to relive cherished moments or explore different paths, the power is in your hands 🌟
New Feature: Chapter Selection
Due to popular demand, we have implemented a Chapter Selection feature! This option is now accessible once you've started a chapter and is easily available via a new button in the Main Menu.
To enhance this feature, we've included a summary per chapter, of the Collectibles you've amassed, visible in the newly established Chapter Select submenu.
Furthermore, all cinematics you have previously viewed can be skipped when using the Chapter Select feature to improve the quality of life.
One final and important note: This feature is compatible with your past saves, offering the freedom to revisit any part of the game, collect any missed Collectible and unlock any missed achievement/trophy without needing to restart the game!
General Fixes and Improvements:
Corrected collider clipping occurring during kayaking.
Resolved a critical bug causing Mimi to continuously walk in place while opening stores.
Fixed issues related to sound triggers; some sounds were not playing at the correct time under certain circumstances.
Resolved an inconsistency where memos and binder tasks were not updating properly.
Corrected grammatical errors in texts.
Quality of Life Enhancements:
Included Photosensitive and Emotional trigger warnings at game launch for better player safety and awareness.
Reworked specific animations to eliminate texture clipping.
Improved world consistency by saving selected elements during Minigames and this can be seen later in the story.
Enhanced performance in expansive scenery areas for a smoother, more enjoyable gameplay experience.
We've heard your feedback and know how much this means to you all. We appreciate your patience and support!
A brand-new patch is live now on PC, fixing major bugs and making your summer adventure with Mimi more peaceful! 🌼
Here’s what we worked on:
Fixes and Improvements:
Fixed an issue that allowed players to clip through the ground when obtaining a collectible, ensuring a more consistent gameplay experience.
Resolved a sound problem when changing the window focus during a cinematic, preventing audio disruptions.
Overhauled various animations to enhance their quality, readability, and to eliminate instances of clipping, resulting in smoother visuals.
Addressed multiple sound issues to ensure that all audio cues are played at the correct timing, enhancing overall immersion.
Made changes to a shader to eliminate one-sided textures and improve depth of certain elements, enhancing visual fidelity.
Fixed a critical issue that prevented camera clips from attaching and blocked player progress, ensuring a seamless gameplay flow.
Improved and overhauled shaders and visual effects (VFX) for better overall quality and optimised framerate, enhancing visual experience.
Rectified camera issues that occurred when leaving the game at specific moments, improving transitions and player control.
Resolved language issues with Mimi, ensuring she now speaks exclusively in the language chosen in the options, without occasional English dialogue.
Prevented Mimi from interacting with her surroundings while reading a Letter, using the Phone, or during a loading screen, reducing distractions.
Improved texture quality on some objects.
Implemented native support for the Steam Deck resolution in the options.
Enhanced UI elements by adding mouse feedback, making it easier to identify interactive elements and improving overall usability.
Quality of Life:
Enhanced mini games, such as breakfast and garden activities, by adding shadows under objects to improve spatial readability and provide a more immersive environment.
Rearranged the order of collectibles in the Binder to align with their appearance sequence in each chapter, enhancing organisation and progression tracking.
Added arrows around written and audio language options to indicate available choices. As a reminder, there are 14 written and 7 audio languages to choose from!
Improved the user interface (UI) when reading Letters, enhancing readability, and making it more intuitive.
Improved the Phone interface by allowing one to scroll through texts without spamming the down direction with the joystick.
Addressed a previous issue that caused Phone conversations, especially with Fabrice, to end prematurely. This improvement further develops the relationship between Mimi and her father.
Introduced additional interactive elements in the garden and Renaud's lair to enhance environmental storytelling and immersion.
Increased font size to improve text readability, ensuring a more comfortable reading experience on small screens.
Added Binder and Phone tasks to provide more explicit guidance to players and help them progress in the intended direction.
Update your game now and embark on a bug-free adventure in the enchanting world of Dordogne!
Cédric Babouche here, I’m the art director behind Dordogne, a heartfelt narrative adventure that takes you to Southern France, in the lovely Dordogne region! It’s an indie creation in vibrant watercolors, crafted by French studio Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, part of animation group Umanimation, and released on June 13!
Dordogne tells the story of Mimi, a 32-year-old woman in search of her childhood memories back in Dordogne, where she used to spend her summers with her grandmother. You will play as Mimi both as an adult and as a child, helping her reconnect with her past.
Help Renaud on his quest
To uncover and understand Mimi’s story, you’ll interact a lot with Renaud, another kid that she had befriended and used to play with. The main inspiration behind the character of Renaud is Huckleberry Finn, the animated series that I used to love watching during the 80s. Renaud is very intelligent, documented and resourceful. He learnt a great deal from Mimi's grandfather, who taught him in school. Sadly, he has a bad situation at home, with a violent dad. So, he spends his time outside.
He is really an outcast and as such he spends a lot of time bonding with his cat and nature is his haven. It might seem cliché that he is dressed so simply, wears a bandage and has his head shaved, but his family is poor, he runs in the forest all the time hurting himself here and there, and when you catch head lice you get your head shaved. It was a reality of the time. And he has the reputation of a thief in the surroundings, often getting caught at the market grabbing things because he is always looking for anything that can help him achieve his own little quest: to find a legendary creature called the Coulobre.
Hunt down the legendary Coulobre
Our team spent a lot of time in Dordogne to find inspiration, visiting places to find the nicest spots to take players to in the game, to paint them in watercolors, and, well, to let the region work its magic on all of us. And the region does have a lot of magic in its local culture.
I got my hands on a fascinating book in Castelnau – a town you’ll visit in the game – that tells all the myths and legends that make up the region’s lore. There were so many cool and intriguing things in there! We would have loved to include many more, but, considering the game’s scale, our Narrative Designer and I decided to focus solely on one myth: the Coulobre.
The Coulobre is the medieval legend of a monster – a giant serpent – said to live in the Dordogne River and devour sailors. It is likely only a myth, as the Dordogne is not deep enough to host such a monster! But it was a way to explain why vessels and their crew would drown in the Dordogne. With all these drowned vessels, an immense treasure was believed to exist in the river. And that’s where Renaud comes in, trying to find the Coulobre and its treasure!
So I hope you look forward to exploring Dordogne with Renaud and getting to know a bit of the magical side of the Dordogne Region. Immerse yourself now in Mimi's childhood!
Cédric Babouche on hand-painting the mesmerizing watercolor world of Dordogne
Hi everyone,
Cédric Babouche here, artistic director at French studio Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, part of animation group Umanimation. We’re bringing you Dordogne on June 13, a charming indie creation. It is a heartfelt narrative adventure about reminiscing your childhood memories in the bucolic Dordogne region in Southern France. I’m here to tell you a bit about how we used hand-painted watercolors to create its world!
Dordogne started out as a very dear, very personal project of mine. Both the Dordogne region and the watercolor technique are important parts of my world that I wanted to share. I’ve been doing watercolor painting since I was 13 or 14 years old, so that’s 30 years spent honing this technique and defining my style. I can’t get enough of it! Dordogne is the project that allows me to put it all at work and express everything I have been developing, refining and experimenting with over my past projects in animation.
Technically, it was a lot faster for me to create the visual assets as hand-painted watercolors than to do it digitally. It would take me about two hours to paint a decor that would otherwise have taken two days to create on Photoshop. I really poured myself into it, I wanted to paint everything myself and went as close to it as I could. I ended up painting something like 150 to 180 visuals. The rest of the team also painted a lot after doing some workshops where I would show them how to paint according to my style and technique. They painted some props as well as a few decors, and were of wonderful assistance even with their recent experience.
Creating everything in watercolor is challenging in that it’s a technique that does not allow you to erase or paint over what you’ve done. Once it’s done, you have to live with it! That means you have to be really confident, and also fine with the fact that the result is not going to be exactly the way you pictured in your mind. It does not mean it’s not good; it’s just different.
Eventually, we did not throw away any of it during the production. Almost everything is a first draft. We would work with some preliminary research on photoshop, using just three gray values to visualize shapes, as well as photos for color reference. Then I’d paint until it looks like the decor of Dordogne.
Ultimately, I think Dordogne really stands out visually for it. The watercolors recall the atmosphere of the Dordogne region, stunning and delicate at the same time, while delivering a distinctive visual experience among video games. They also bring that soft and dreamy touch that perfectly helps convey the sense of nostalgia and wonder for our story about reminiscing childhood.
Cédric Babouche here, artistic director at Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, the multimedia arm of French animation studio Umanimation, currently developing Dordogne, a narrative adventure that is coming June 13. It’s a heartfelt story about reminiscing your childhood memories, and I’m here to tell you a bit more about how the game takes you down memory lane!
Finding your past
In Dordogne you play as Mimi, a 32-year-old woman traveling to Dordogne to visit the house of her recently deceased grandmother. They used to spend summers there together when Mimi was a child, but the last time was twenty years before. They have lost contact since and Mimi has no memories left from this time. As she rediscovers the house and its surroundings, some sights or objects become doors to the past and lost memories come rushing back to her.
Each key memory will act as a jump back in time where you play as 12-year-old Mimi on the last summer she spent at her grandmother’s. You’ll go back and forth between adult and child Mimi, until the memories you have recollected allow you to eventually find out what happened on that last summer in Dordogne.
Collect your own memories
To recollect a memory, you’ll have to complete mini games. Each of them offers a pretext to move forward in the story: they will allow you to get closer to your grandmother, to meet and start a friendship with a little boy named Renaud, to interact with people at Sarlat’s market…
The actions you will be performing will take you exploring your beautiful and peaceful surroundings to collect photos, sounds and words that you’ll put together in a binder. As you assemble your findings, the binder will read as a reminiscence of your Summertime as a child.
Each player will take the photographs they want, choose the sounds and the words they want to collect, so you’ll really give life to your own binder and create your very own story to recall!
A game for the child in all of us
Dordogne has a universal appeal in that it deals with that nostalgic, foggy relationship we all have with our childhood. We want it to be a game about a part of life that any person can relate to. There are things that every child has done, like bathing in a river, throwing pebbles, climbing rocks, running around in nature. Dordogne is about these childhood moments.
But it is also about the human relations that shape our existence. We all have strong memories, good or bad, about important figures and interactions from when we were growing up. Dordogne is also about these relationships that mark us—of which our team wanted to keep the best, most positive impression, the one that we all long for and that can resonate within every player! Our playtests have shown how much everyone can relate to the game.
Depending on your story, you might get hooked instantly or it might take you a bit more time, but everyone found a little something that spoke to them and made them want to keep going with Mimi’s story!
Dordogne came out on June 13, join us in this heart-warming experience here!
Dordogne is out! Start your nostalgic journey with the Launch Trailer
Hello everyone!
We are thrilled to announce thatDordogne is out!☀️🌊 Head straight to the radiant South of France for a nostalgic trip with Dordogne Launch Trailer.
Animated watercolors run deep in Dordogne
Dordogne is a unique, immersive narrative experience in gorgeous watercolors. 🎨 Embark on a journey that will awaken your senses and evoke warm memories, playing as Mimi in search of her childhood memories.
Explore precious recollections and relive cherished moments with your grandmother. As past meets present, confront your adult choices with fond childhood memories to uncover lost family secrets. 🦋
Jump into the idyllic landscapes of Dordogne, brought to life in enchanting hand-painted watercolors. 🏞️ Catch the moments, the panoramas, the scents, the sounds, and the sensations. Recount these vivid memories in your journal as a recollection of Mimi’s family past that’s unique to your experience and a nostalgic, touching reflection of your journey. 📖
Discover how video games can tell the greatest stories with the wholesome experience Dordogne, out now on PC.
The colorful and delicate narrative adventure about childhood memories, love and family is available on Steam here
Hand-painted nostalgia in Dordogne's touching Pre-Launch Trailer
We're happy to release an enchanting Pre-Launch Trailer for our wholesome indie game Dordogne ✨
Meet Cédric Babouche in his hometown of Sarlat, Dordogne, the visual artist behind the game, in an intimate account of his personal history with the South-of-France setting of the game and the hand-painted watercolor artistic direction used to give life to it.
Dordogne is a colorful and delicate narrative adventure about childhood memories, love and family that takes you to the radiant French countryside very soon—launching June 13. Watch the Pre-Launch Trailer and start remembering Dordogne now!
A heartfelt reminiscence
Dordogne is the brainchild of French visual artist Cédric Babouche. In today’s Pre-Launch Trailer, he shares his emotional connection to the game, an immersive adventure where you’ll explore the breath-taking landscapes of Dordogne, in the South of France. This region is as dear to Cédric Babouche as the hand-painted aesthetic of the game. All of its mesmerizing sceneries were made using the watercolor style and technique he has been honing for thirty years, since he was a child.
Enjoy the second track of the unique music composed by Supernaive, these introspective sounds support the nostalgic and heart-warming journey to Dordogne. This exclusive single is part of Dordogne’s OST that will be released along with the launch of the game.
