Bye Sweet Carole

As someone who consumes a lot of video games both out of passion and as part of my line of work, over the years I've come across projects that have a very strange dilemma to them. It might seem odd to say, but there are games that are not as great as video games. They have plenty of admirable traits and features, but in practice, when it comes to immersion and becoming encapsulated by an interactive product, they frankly fail. This is the case with Little Sewing Machine's Bye Sweet Carole.

Anyone who has seen a trailer or even a screenshot of this title will be familiar with perhaps its best feature. The animation style and the artistic visuals are likely what put this game on your radar, and rightly so. Bye Sweet Carole is a wonderfully and lovingly animated and drawn game with some of the finest and most unique visual stylings I have seen in a video game. In the same way that Cuphead and soon Mouse: P.I. For Hire impress with their rubber hose design, Bye Sweet Carole has a hand-drawn aesthetic that feels like it was taken out of a classic Disney film, and this leads to scenes and set pieces so rich in character and colour that you can't help but fall in love with it. It really is a visual marvel.

But here's the catch... visuals cannot be everything in a video game. There has to be more to tie the wider whole together and unfortunately Bye Sweet Carole doesn't manage to achieve a great deal on these fronts. For one, while the storyline has an interesting hook that somewhat resembles Alice in Wonderland, the dialogue falls a bit flat. We follow the main character of Lana as she unravels a mystery, a story that basically sees her be mistreated at every single turn, something she replies to with what can best be described as a distant squeal. Again, you want to follow the story to see how the core mystery unfolds, but the characters you meet along the way fail to be all too memorable and Lana herself isn't an all a convincing lead. So the overall narrative is a bit hit and miss.

This same impression can then be applied to the gameplay - and likewise tied back to my original point that some games just aren't meant to be played. There's a story and great visual direction worth exploring but the gameplay itself will suck a lot of the joy out of it. It's set up in 2D levels reminiscent of adventure games of the 90s and you explore these small environments and complete Metroidvania-like tasks to progress onwards. Essentially, to overcome hazards, you have to find items or ways to unblock doors, or even discover abilities that allow Lana to change form and access other areas. In theory it seems like it has serviceable depth, but in practice it's far too straightforward and lacks any challenge and plays at such a sluggish pace and in a stiff manner that it's not much fun to move around either. It comes across as a game that was built for an SNES controller, not a modern device or a mouse and keyboard, it's that rudimentary and rigid.

Bye Sweet Carole does attempt to spice things up with stalker enemies (which is a peculiar and conflicting idea for a 2D environment with less room to escape to say the least), and this does get the blood pumping. However, and this is a big however, as the hours roll on, you can't help but feel as though this game would be better with less interactivity and served up in more of a movie-like manner, perhaps somewhat similar to how Telltale offered its quick-time events in structured cut-scene-like moments. As it is, the best parts of Bye Sweet Carole is when the game takes control away from the player and lets you bask in the story and the artwork. To me, for what's supposed to be a modern video game, this is a pretty big issue.

This is why I find myself at such an impasse with Bye Sweet Carole because there are ideas and elements in place here that are nothing short of magnificent. But as far as a video game goes, it's a very different situation as it's frankly not a lot of fun to actually play much of the time. And this is without talking about the technical issues I experienced, which included a game-breaking bug that meant I had to restart the story from scratch...

All in all, Bye Sweet Carole is a game that you should come to solely for the story and the wonderful art direction. It's a fascinating idea with great potential, but the execution of this title and how it's fundamentally structured as a video game could be benefitted by a return to the chalk board.