Doku — The Lost Chronicle: our new game travels through the history of the Pas-de-Calais

Meet our new mobile game: Doku — The Lost Chronicle. It is a cartoon action-adventure for children aged 5 to 13, and a serious game: in seven episodes, 30 chapters and 22 mini-games, it travels through the history of the Pas-de-Calais, in northern France, from the coal forest of 300 million years ago all the way to the Moon. Every episode is presented on the game's page. The game is in development and is coming soon to Google Play.

Pages to find again

The Grey Mist has blown through: it has scattered the pages of the Great Chronicle, the book that remembers everything. Without them, places forget their history, the world turns grey and silent, and little creatures of mist, the Mistlings, settle in everywhere. Pip sets off to find the pages with a companion from the Doku universe. The Grimoire, keeper of the Chronicle, reads every page that comes back; Russet the fox is always ready to go; Hoot the owl asks the questions.

Pip changes outfit in every chapter: a little knight, a visitor in a lamp helmet, a little Gaul, the band's drummer, a kite flyer, a boatman, a stargazer… And each episode has its own Mist: the Soot Mist, the Silence Mist, the Mist of the Open Sea, the Marsh Mist, the Mist of Fear. All these characters are made up, and the game says so. The villains stand for no side in history: the real villain is forgetting. And the Mistlings are never killed: they are dispelled.

How it plays

You play with a joystick that appears under your thumb. Moving means dodging; stopping means throwing at the nearest Mistling: magic acorns in the Olhain forest, mistletoe berries among the Gauls, shells at Berck, little stars on the heath… Attacks are slow and announced by a zone on the ground, and hearts come in halves, as in Zelda.

At every level you choose one talent out of three: an extra shot, a bounce, a shield that circles around you… Each episode dresses them in its own way, and almost every one adds a talent of its own. Your companion throws alongside Pip; each one has its own power, gives a talent and has its own strength, and you can swap at any time from the pause menu. Real animals and plants are peaceful: you watch them and note them in the explorer's notebook (92 species), you never fight them.

Every zone you win gives back a page of the Chronicle: there are 287 to find. Before a chapter's guardian, Hoot waits for you to come over and asks a question, always about a page the child has already read. A little game, "Put it in order", sorts the dated pages from oldest to newest. And losing wipes nothing out: what you have learnt stays. Once a chapter is won, its mini-games open: no fighting, no Mist, just a place and a skill.

Every page has its source

That is the serious-game promise. A page of the Chronicle is a line in a fact sheet, with its source: Wikipedia, the French heritage database (base Mérimée), museums, official sites, space agencies. What is made up is said to be made up: the characters, the Mists, the chapters' guides, an imagined village or journey. When two sources disagree, the game picks one and says so, or leaves the figure out.

Difficult history is told with care. No soldier is an enemy, there is no weapon and no flag, and both world wars are told in a child's words, through people's lives and what helped them. At La Coupole, no rocket is ever shown. Pip is never a child at work, and legends are told as legends. The chapter "Under the dome" will be presented to La Coupole's educational service to be reworked with it.

Made for children

The game has no ads and nothing to buy: companions are earned by learning. No link leads out of the game without going through a parental gate.

Under the hood

All the scenery is generated by code, in three.js WebGPU and TSL, with a WebGL 2 fallback, in a Nuxt app wrapped by Capacitor for Android. Toon rendering, ink outlines, and 60 frames per second as the target on a mid-range phone.

Seven episodes

Each episode will also get its own article on this devlog, one every two days: the history of the Pas-de-Calais, theme by theme.

Olhain, The Lost Chronicle, in the hills of Artois. It all begins in the Olhain forest, at the castle standing in its moat and at the Fairies' Table of Fresnicourt-le-Dolmen. Then the Mist pulls Pip through time: the Stone Age, a possible frozen future (made up, and the game says so) and the hills of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in 1914-1918, where Pip is a messenger who throws poppies. Six chapters.

Coal, In the land of the miners. The coal forest of 300 million years ago, the pit and the miners' town with Lucien, an invented former miner, then the slag heaps and the Louvre-Lens. Pip is a visitor in a lamp helmet there, never a child at work. Two mini-games: the pit and the slag heap.

Arras, The city of a thousand lives. Six chapters, from the Atrebates to today: the land of the Gauls, the Roman town, the trouvères, the town of tapestries, the boves under the cobbles and Vauban's citadel, "the Beautiful Useless One". Two mini-games: the tapestry, and Robin and Marion.

Giants, Giants, fairs and carnival. An invented village where a new giant is born, a town celebrating its giants, then the Dunkirk carnival, just next door in the Nord département. Armed giants are told about, never drawn. Two mini-games: the fair and the procession.

Opal, Wind, sand and sea. The coast from south to north: Berck, its kites and its seals, the great harbour of Boulogne-sur-Mer and Nausicaá, the Two Capes and Blériot's little plane, Calais, its lace and its dragon. Six mini-games, from the kite to the lace, by way of a dive and the Channel crossing.

Saint-Omer, Along the water. The market gardeners' marsh, the cathedral and the book, the Fontinettes boat lift, and Thérouanne, the vanished town the archaeologists are finding again. Five mini-games, including the barge, the bacôve and the dig.

La Coupole, From shadow to stars. The Helfaut heath at nightfall, the dome that became a museum, where the war is told through Paul, a made-up boy, then the planetarium and its journey from planet to planet, and the Moon. Five mini-games, from the sky of the Perseids to the lunar rover.

Coming soon to Google Play

Doku — The Lost Chronicle is in development. It will come out on Android first, and we will tell you about every step here. In the meantime, each episode page lists its chapters, its mini-games, its key dates, what the game makes up, the places to visit and all its sources: it's this way.