Bye Sweet Carole is a moving storybook. It resembles an old-school, hand-drawn Disney film, but it plays like a side-scrolling narrative platformer with a dark, serious side.
After sitting down for an early hands-on preview, I’m curious to see where this strange trip down the rabbit hole goes.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Bye Sweet Carole is a heartwarming tale, though. The story focuses on a young girl, Lana, who is in an orphanage. Her best friend Carole, goes missing, and you have to find out what happened to her. That adventure means crossing the boundary between the real world and a fantastical other world with adorable talking animals and nightmarish tentacle monsters.
The section of the game I played was split between the real world in the orphanage, and the rabbit hole alternate dimension. This sudden sidestep into nightmare fuel really impressed me. The alternate dimension really seemed to be playing on the early 1900s world, as I started to see hints of war, barbed wire and impact craters. I’ll be interested to see where the story goes.
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Down the rabbit hole
The gameplay felt most similar to that of Limbo or Inside. The demo had me mostly running from left to right, with some basic platforming, swinging from ropes, jumping gaps and climbing vines. It’s simple, but I’m hoping there’s a bit more to the final adventure.
Visually, Bye Sweet Carole really shines. It looks and feels like the Disney animated films of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Everything feels deliberate and hand-drawn. When the game slips into a darker tone and you need to run from monsters chasing you down, the shadows and tentacles of enemies lashing across the level at you, it really creates a great contrast.
It’s in the gameplay that I started to see some cracks, however. There were a couple of moments in the demo where I missed a jump thanks to some weird timing in the animation. There were also a couple of moments where reading the map and knowing where to go next was quite tricky with the detailed environment and backgrounds. We’ll see if these wrinkles are ironed out ahead of launch.
After a brief step into Bye Sweet Carole, I’m definitely intrigued. The visuals are definitely unique, and they look incredibly handcrafted. From this brief demo though, I’m hoping that the final product does enough to warrant a game, rather than an interactive animated film.
Bye, Sweet Carole is releasing on 10th October 2025, for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X and PC via Steam.
