The game is about the titular character, Désiré, an achromatic boy who only sees black and white, and the player guides him in four various parts of his life.

The game contains themes such as sexuality, bullying, pedophilia, zoophilia, suicide, depression, morality, feminism, BDSM and criticism of aspects of modern society such as capitalism and materialism.

Désiré, who lives in the suburbs of Lyon with his parents and brother Bruno, is advised by an old man (who is apparently imaginary, as other characters imply) to stand up against a boy named David who bullies him at school.

The chapter ends with Désiré talking to a hallucination of an obese man who tries to convince him to stop changing society, however corrupt it might be, and to accept everything as it is.

He finds a young girl, Léa, alone on the streets and reveals her grandfather is Martin Lacour, an antique collector who currently owns the manuscript.

Manos Karkalemis, writing for Rage Quit, stated that Désiré was "one of the most "difficult" and indigestible adventure games" they had come in contact with.

[4] They went on to say "due to its appearance I was prepared for a totally different experience, however, it proved that it hid very heavy contents inside, trying to cope with numerous extremely important issues of human sexuality in just a few hours' time.

In a more negative review, Shuva Raha of Adventure Gamers stated "If you have a strong masochistic urge to inflict a few hours of excruciating, pretentious sociopolitical ramblings interspersed with bouts of petty cruelty and vulgarity upon yourself, Désiré is the game for you.

"[5] Raha criticised the writing of the main character, calling him "obnoxious" as well as how the game represented some of its themes, notably disabilities.

Raha also criticised the writing as a whole, its gameplay, citing frequent backtracking, slow movement speeds, poorly clued quests and puzzles, and the lack of voice acting or sound effects.

On March 31st, 2017, the developer confirmed that they had taken part in this activity while responding to discussion forum posts on the game's community hub.