Bye Sweet Carole is a Disney-Fan's Dream but Its Gameplay Lets It Down
Bye Sweet Carole, which is set to launch tomorrow, is a point-and-click style horror game from developer Little Sewing Machine and publisher Maximum Entertainment. In the game, you play as Lana searching for her missing friend Carole. Along the way she uncovers the dark secrets behind Carole’s disappearance from Bunny Hall orphanage.
At first, the game plays out like a classic point-and-click adventure where you move Lana around each level picking up items and using them to make progress. You receive a letter from Carole but have it promptly stolen by a rabbit (very Alice in Wonderland-like) and while chasing it down you’re forced to run from a mysterious entity yourself until you find yourself back in Bunny Hall orphanage.
Things get more sinister and suspicious as you continue on and move between two different worlds. The puzzles themselves are simple enough to solve and are reminiscent of point-and-clicks from the 90s. Combine items together and figure out a way to progress as you look for clues behind Carole’s disappearance. Eventually, Carole gains the ability to transform into a rabbit to help traverse even the smallest of spaces.
Where Bye Sweet Carole fell flat for me was its stealth sections. Regularly Lana finds herself forced to hide or run away from different enemies. Unlike games with stealth sections like Little Nightmares, for example, where completing stealth sections means making significant progress, the stealth section in Bye Sweet Carole feels like a huge chore. And it really made me not want to continue with the game at all.
During these areas, you’re able to hide and hold your breath for a certain amount of time, but if they happen to see you, they grab you and you’ll have to start over from a previous spot. Rather than making the game scarier or more challenging, it makes things frustrating especially when you’re stuck without being able to make much progress for a significant amount of time.
And I did want to make progress because the art style and cutscenes in the game are very impressive. I felt quickly immersed in this world and was excited to see where things would lead. And it definitely isn’t all bad, I enjoyed solving some of the puzzles, like figuring out how to get past a pesky owl or testing out levers to see what they do. It’s just unfortunate that the more “action-packed” moments aren’t satisfying in the least.
Fans of classic point-and-clicks may find a few things to enjoy about Bye Sweet Carole, but after getting stuck on multiple different stealth sections, I had little motivation to continue. It has a really wonderful story, but the effort it takes to enjoy it makes it difficult for me to recommend.
Bye Sweet Carole is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch now. Players that are fans of classic point-and-clicks.