As a fan of narrative horror games, curious indie-adjacent oddities and – most importantly in this context – Lewis Carroll’s timeless classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I’ve had a firm eye on Bye Sweet Carole. Taking cues from all of the above and drenching it in visuals pulled straight from Silver Age Disney animation, it’s an incredibly promising endeavour. And I was recently lucky enough to get hands-on with roughly the first 30 minutes of the game.
Right away, the most interesting and exciting of Bye Sweet Carole’s many curious traits is its visual identity and implementation. It most closely resembles 1950s and 60s Disney animated feature films such as Cinderella, Sword in the Stone and, of course, Alice in Wonderland, which were all part of a historic effort to make animated films that looked like moving works of art.
Bye Sweet Carole reads almost like a second phase of Disney’s “art in motion” movement, taking it one step further with a layer of interaction. This opening section of the game saw me control the game’s star, Lana, a student and resident of the mysterious Bunny Hall orphanage, as she ponders the status of her missing friend Carole and finds herself caught between the real world and a curious realm full of wonderful and frightening oddities.
At its core, Bye Sweet Carole seems to play like any number of other side-scrolling adventure platformers, gently guiding Lana through light platforming sequences and encounters with creepy creatures that must be avoided or escaped from, a la Limbo. I was told that this early sequence is a very small taste of the full scope of Bye Sweet Carole’s gameplay offering, which will later evolve to include point-and-click elements, more involved platforming and even boss fights.
The main gameplay highlights I saw in this initial taste were a number of “quick time” events that tasked me with mashing buttons or entering specific sequences to ensure success in pre-animated sequences, which seem designed to allow the game’s gorgeous animation work to shine through. It’s certainly not the first game to attempt to lend interactivity and agency to a tapestry of canned animation. You can look as far back as games like Dragon’s Lair for that – a title which boasted animation from ex-Disney animator Don Bluth, no less.
And that’ll no doubt be the big draw for this game, offering a unique window into a dread-filled, survival-horror inspired world that, at least at first glance, presents like a classic Disney fairytale. Fans of the likes of American McGee’s Alice or lead developer Chris Darril’s work on the Remothered series will find similar themes here, nestled amongst a turn-of-the-20th century English countryside.
I’m curious and keen to see how the game tackles the early 1900s political movements of women’s suffrage and labour unions, which the breaking moments in this demo seemed to hint at, and how those might tie into the darker and fantastical flipside of the experience.
We won’t have to wait long to find out. Bye Sweet Carole launches on October 9th for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC.
Previewed on PC at an event hosted by Bandai Namco Entertainment Australia
Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s preview policy and ethics
