I really wanted to like Bye Sweet Carole

The first thing you probably notice about Bye Sweet Carole, the debut game from Little Sewing Machine, is the gorgeous art style. Every aspect of Bye Sweet Carole is stunning to look at: the scenery, the character art, the transformation effects, the respawn animation, and even the spooky old codger with red eyes and a top hat. I love looking at everything in this game…it’s just a shame that I have to play it.

Bye Sweet Carole is a side-scrolling point-and-click style game that mostly prioritizes puzzles and light platforming. From time to time, you’ll need to pull off a jump, or balance on a beam, but for the most part, you’ll be gathering an item then shuttling it to another part of the level to use it. In the two or so hours I’ve played, there’ve been a few changes (you’ll discover how to transform into a rabbit and you’ll have to hide Little Nightmares style from lumbering ghouls), but the core remains the same: solve puzzles to move to the next level to discover a bit more information about the titular Carole Simmons.

I really wanted to like this game. The art style is incredible and the premise of a 1930s-style Disney horror story is such a compelling idea. I have a few complaints that, in aggregate, is probably going to force me to put the game down for good. First, I really think the focus on platforming and analog movement with jumping was a mistake. Lana Benton, your player character, moves too slowly (even with a sprint) and suffers from that momentum problem early versions of The Witcher 3 had: when you stop, Lana’s animation has to continue. The jumping never feels good, especially about an hour in when you unlock the Bunny transformation that has you trying to pull off wall jumps.

As you play, to ramp up some tension, parts of the crumbling school and manor house you play much of the game in begins to fall apart, causing you to precariously stand on a ledge. At random intervals, you’ll be greeted by the single most frustrating mechanic I’ve found in the game: a balance meter ripped straight from grinding in Tony Hawk. The balance meter will zip from one side to the other and it’s your job to hold it in the center not keep it from hitting the edges. What ends up being so frustrating though, is that often times a balance meter failure ends in your death…only to be checkpointed a foot from the balance point, where you’ll need to do it all over again. This is a tiny quibble, but if you fail it two or three times in a row, the balance mini-game is removed, allowing you to pass the gap without a challenge.

I mention the balance meter not just because it’s an annoying gameplay mechanic that feels bad, but because I think it’s a bigger sign of the struggles in Bye Sweet Carole: the pacing, the tension, and the story just isn’t there.

Bye Sweet Carole is slow, doling out lavishly animated cut scenes every hour or so. You’ll find yourself doing a lot of backtracking across lovingly crafted environments, but the animation and art fades into the background when all you’re doing is going from one “Use screwdriver” prompt to another. And again, when Lana moves slowly you feel the pacing slip away even further.

Good horror is all about balancing tension, ramping it up when you least expect it and releasing tension at the right moment. Much of the tension in Bye Sweet Carole evaporates the moment it’s introduced. Sure, there’s a few jump scares and creepy vibes galore, but it becomes obvious very early on how binary a lot of the scares are. You either succeed or fail the balancing mini-game, the menacing owl in your face flaps at you when you try to pass but won’t hurt you, and if you simply run fast enough that ghoul chasing you will stop a few screens from now. The fear I feel while playing isn’t from what’s on the screen, it’s the terror of having to do it all over again.

All of that, the slow pacing, the lack of tension, and the traversal mechanics that I just wish were more traditional point-and-click movements, could be forgiven if the story wasn’t the most 1930s Disney aspect of the game. I don’t mean that in a problematic way, but have you really thought about the story of those early Disney movies lately? You play as Lana Benton, a young woman at Bunny Hall, an orphanage. The school has recently been sold, an evil corporation using World War I style explosives and gas to exterminate the warrens of rabbits that give the hall its name. Also, Lana is a princess in the parallel kingdom of Corolla. Which again, is all trope-y stuff I could get over…if ever major moment in the story wasn’t followed by a storybook narrator sucking all of the mystery out of the moment.

I desperately wanted to love this game. I’m a sucker for stories about internal traumas manifested as Industrial Age robber-barons and a point-and-click horror game is perfect for the season. But every step of the way, Bye Sweet Carole stumbles when it could be bounding.

So, if I didn’t have fun with this one and spent 900 words complaining about my two or three hours with it, why write this? Because I didn’t like Bye Sweet Carole, but you might. The art is gorgeous, the music is on-point; the game part just never really clicked with me. Your tolerance for these gameplay hiccups (or capabilities) are probably different than mine and, even though I didn’t leave super high on Bye Sweet Carole, it is a game that’s at least worth looking at. There is a lot good here, just not the perfect mix for me.