Visit a mystical Montreal corner shop in this lovely little indie game

rockpapershotgun.com:

Need anything from the shop? Mushroom milk? Fresh tarts? Mystical bejewelled skull? I'm just popping out to Dépanneur Nocturne, a lovely little game which came out in 2020 and I kept forgetting to post about. It's a small first-person explore-o-chatter set within a corner shop in a magical, mystical Montreal, full of things to admire, find, poke at, and chat about with the owner. And it'll only cost you about as much as a pint of semi-skimmed and loaf of Kingsmill from your own local shop.

Dépanneur Nocturne is a type of game I adore: pay a few quid to see something different and weird and surprising and be done in an hour. The spark of novelty is important when most of my gaming time honestly goes on roguelikelike games and repeatable multiplayer murderfests. So here we are, out in the city at night, it's late, it's raining, and your beloved is waiting for you back home, but you want to bring her something nice so you nip into the local shop, the dépanneur.

It's a cosy little shop, and a friendly one. Enjoy a chat with salamander shopkeeper Eugénie! Make yourself a coffee! Help yourself to a tart! Pet the cat! Have a good rummage around! See what you can find! See what you can do! While most of the shop's products are not of interest to you, you can bring certain special items up to Eugénie for an explanation of what they are, and maybe buy them for your sweetie. Maybe she'll even show you her special stock. I don't want to overstate Dépanneur Nocturne's scale but it does have a pleasing amount of little things to discover, including some not-so-little things I only found when I popped back into the shop last week.

I do like that this Québécois game is bilingual, and I like how it handles that. Eugénie hails you en français with a "Bonsoir!" and you set the game's language by responding in French or English (but can switch any point in a dialogue option with her). Though I speak French with more enthusiasm than competence, I've been brushing up thanks to a bandees