Bye Sweet Carole is an indie action-adventure game where you play as a young girl caught up in a quaint adventure. Read our full review to see what the game does well, what it doesn’t do well, and if it’s worth your money.
Bye Sweet Carole Review Overview
What is Bye Sweet Carole?
Bye Sweet Carole is an indie action-adventure game by Italian artist and game designer Chris Darril, and published by Little Sewing Machine. Hand-drawn and stylized to look like classical Disney films from the company’s early cinematic history, Bye Sweet Carole tells the story of Lana Benton, a young lady looking for her friend Carole through early 20th-century England.
Bye Sweet Carole features:
⚫︎ Classical Disney animation style
⚫︎ Full voice acting for all characters
⚫︎ Puzzle, action-adventure gameplay
⚫︎ Point-and-click mechanics with hand-drawn backgrounds
| Digital Storefronts | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 PSN |
 eShop |
 eShop |
| $29.99 | |||
Bye Sweet Carole Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Beautiful Animation Great Voice Acting New Classic Disney Story to Fall in Love With |
More Movie Than Game, Really Too Slow, Even for its Ilk Stylization Gets in the Way Sometimes |
Bye Sweet Carole Story - 7/10
The search for Carole takes Lana through an absolutely mystical journey with a dash of morbid, period-appropriate context and commentary that wouldn’t be out of place in Disney’s own list of classics. It’s a fun and chokingly heartfelt story that maybe overstays its welcome with its slow pacing and, frankly, niche appeal. Still, I can’t find anything inherently offensive or awful about it, just not particularly competitive or engaging for most modern audiences.
Bye Sweet Carole Gameplay - 3/10
Some things are simply not some people’s forte, and while I think Chris Darril is an excellent artist, his game design needs a little work. It’s not awful, in fact it’s almost passable–keyword being "almost". Bye Sweet Carole is both too slow and too unengaging to be the action-adventure game it’s trying to be, or the puzzle point-and-click it’s trying to channel. I don’t find it entertaining in that facet, hence the low score.
Bye Sweet Carole Visuals - 10/10
No other score would be appropriate. If visual style alone could carry a game, this game has the artistry to pull that off, with its beautifully hand-drawn backgrounds, classical Disney character designs, and jaw-dropping use of multiplanes to simulate depth. This is easily the game’s main draw, and it won’t require you to get past the main menu to see why.
Bye Sweet Carole Audio - 8/10
Bye Sweet Carole’s audioscape is composed of great voice-acting performances and a soaring score that, much like its visuals, evoke the same grandeur a certain capitalistic juggernaut once did in its heyday. Not quite an earworm and not quite the spectacle its sights could provide, this game’s sounds still impress
Bye Sweet Carole Value for Money - 5/10
Coming in at the indie standard of $25, this game is certainly one of the purchases out there. It’s an okay price for a game with heavy cons to go with its great pros. I’d only purchase this if you’re a diehard fan of a certain era of American animation. Otherwise, I’d wait for a sale, or just walk away entirely.
Bye Sweet Carole Overall Score - 66/100
Just like Disney back then, Bye Sweet Carole carries with it a certain flair that you can’t help but appreciate. Visuals, audio, and story all evoke that nostalgic feeling while delivering a gut punch of period commentary. Sadly, just like Disney nowadays, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can love it despite its many, many pitfalls.
Lacking gameplay, too slow pacing, and half the heart of a point-and-click adventure; all of these make this game less worthwhile than just renting out an old Disney movie and experiencing the magic as it was.
Bye Sweet Carole Review: Just Go Watch A Disney Movie
I’ve always believed that great art isn’t born from compromise—and as such, it takes time. One look at Bye Sweet Carole and you can practically feel the years of painstaking, hand-drawn labor staring back at you. It’s the same sort of awe Cuphead inspired, but somehow even more unbelievable. Where Cuphead channeled an entire era of animation, Bye Sweet Carole evokes a very specific creator from that era.
Disney. I may have no fondness for what the company has become, but I can’t deny the artistry it once embodied—and clearly, neither can Bye Sweet Carole. Whether intentional or not, the homage is unmistakable. If this were simply a film, it would be exquisite. But it isn’t. It’s a game—and that brings an entirely different expectation, one that may have been lost somewhere between the sketchbook and the screen.
Because make no mistake: this is more a movie than a game. And that’s not exactly praise, because this is the compromise to the game’s stunning visual style that I was talking about earlier, rearing its ugly head.
The Tale of a Lady Far too Inadequate for a World of Tar and Smoke
Let’s start with the story, because that’s the first thing that grips you when you boot up Bye Sweet Carole—aside from the jaw-dropping visuals, of course. Interestingly enough, it’s not actually Carole’s story we follow, but that of the friend she left behind. Lana, a young woman still finding her place at Bunny Hall, isn’t exactly the most beloved resident.
Constantly ostracized by the orphanage’s other occupants, Lana found comfort only in her friendship with Carole, until that comfort vanished the day Carole mysteriously disappeared. Her search soon leads her to the strange, magical world of Corolla (and no, not the Toyota kind), where she must traverse two worlds in hopes of finding—and perhaps saving—her only friend.
It’s a simple premise, but one beautifully adorned with detail and atmosphere. The story’s richness doesn’t come from complexity, but from the way it intertwines with its hauntingly elegant world. I won’t spoil how it all ends—that would be robbing you of half the experience—but I will say this: the narrative and setting absolutely live up to the game’s extraordinary presentation.
And speaking of presentation, let’s talk visuals, because let’s be honest, that’s the first thing anyone notices about Bye Sweet Carole.
Reliving the Magic, One Hand-drawn Frame at a Time
I mean, just look at this game. Those sharp outlines, those hand-painted backdrops, those softly blurred foreground layers meant to mimic the depth of a multiplane camera—it’s impossible not to see the influence. If Bye Sweet Carole wasn’t at least partially inspired by Disney’s golden-age animations, I’d happily eat a boot.
All jokes aside, the visuals are the main attraction here, and that’s no coincidence. Every frame seems soaked in hours, if not days or weeks, of meticulous traditional animation. It’s a game built with the patience and passion of a bygone era, where every brushstroke mattered.
And while Disney is the most obvious touchstone, it’s not the only one. There’s a sprinkle of Studio Ghibli’s warmth in the storytelling, and maybe even a faint whiff of those strange, uncanny straight-to-video animations from decades ago; something that feels both familiar and otherworldly. This results in one of the most visually captivating titles you’ll ever see sitting in your Steam library.
It’s a paradox of design: utterly unique, yet comfortably derivative. Not a copycat, but a heartfelt homage to a lost art form. I won’t deny it stirred my nostalgia. I grew up on films that looked just like this. For a moment, I even smiled at the thought that this "movie" was mine to play as much as it was to watch.
That smile didn’t last long, however. It gave way first to frustration, then to indifference, as one harsh truth became painfully clear the longer I played Bye Sweet Carole: this isn’t really a game—or at least, not a very good one.
Profoundly Monotonous, Despite the Whimsy
Oh, how it pains me to say this, but Bye Sweet Carole just really isn’t much of a game. Perhaps it was meant to be more of an "experience"? But even then, it doesn’t quite deliver on that front either.
On paper, it’s an action-adventure title, and that’s not inherently a bad thing. Plenty of excellent games have taken that same foundation and spun gold from it, many inspired by those point-and-click adventures of the early 2000s. And yet, none of them look quite like Bye Sweet Carole. So where does it all go wrong?
It’s boring and clunky. Two of the gravest sins a game can commit, outranked only by predatory microtransactions and forced ad-breaks every time you die. Granted, boredom is subjective. One person’s thrilling adventure is another’s 3 PM college lecture. But for me? This one lands squarely in lecture territory.
Everything takes just a little too long to accomplish, with too many narrative pit stops along the way to keep the momentum going before it fizzles out. Lana takes too long to get anywhere, the puzzles are just a bit too unconnected to be fun, and there are too many weird gameplay implementations for it to be a smooth experience.
And that’s a shame too, because I genuinely do appreciate what the story’s trying to do—the way it weaves in nuances from a particular era of English history. But I’m neither English nor from that time, so much of the intended appeal just sails right past me.
Buggy with Weird Hitboxes
As if that weren’t enough of a gut punch, Bye Sweet Carole’s own visual brilliance ends up working against its gameplay. It’s not just a case of one great thing being paired with something mediocre; it’s one actively sabotaging the other. That lovely multiplane depth effect used to capture the feel of vintage animation? It occasionally obscures the player’s view, making certain jumps awkward—or worse, completely blind.
Then there are the technical hiccups. Progression bugs crop up often enough to break immersion, and hitbox glitches can leave you stranded, forced to reload while your sluggish character plods along helplessly.
All of it adds up to a portrait of a development team with stunning artistic vision but limited experience in game design. It’s the kind of project that probably would’ve shone brighter as a short film than as a playable experience.
Vestigial and Weird Mechanics
Were you expecting Bye Sweet Carole to have stealth mechanics? No? Me neither. But it does, and don’t worry, you won’t encounter them often enough to adjust your expectations anyway. They pop up occasionally, usually as the only way forward in a given section, before quietly disappearing again for long stretches at a time.
The same goes for the balancing mechanic on ledges; an oddly vestigial feature that feels more like a leftover from a different design phase than something truly integrated into the gameplay. They’re not exactly one-off gimmicks, but they appear so sporadically that I found myself constantly wondering when (or if) they’d show up again.
Honestly, I can’t help but think the game wouldn’t have changed much if these mechanics had been left out entirely. They’re there, sure, but they leave so little impression that I barely feel their presence at all.
Something Forgettable Under Something Great
And so, we come to the final act of our review for Bye Sweet Carole. As a work of art, it’s undeniably stunning, an achievement in style, animation, and atmosphere that few modern games could hope to match. But as a game? That’s where the illusion starts to crumble. It’s as though the project reached the summit of one mountain while forgetting to climb the other, resulting in an experience that’s as breathtaking to watch as it is jarring to play.
It’s a real shame, because great art shouldn’t feel like a compromise, as I’ve stated at the start of the review. True mastery comes from balance, when craftsmanship, storytelling, and interactivity all elevate one another. Bye Sweet Carole aims for that harmony but lands somewhere short, caught between being a moving picture and a playable dream.
In the end, you’re left wishing its beauty was paired with the same depth of gameplay. As it stands, you might be better off just paying Disney the royalties and watching something that earns the nostalgia this one only borrows.
Is Bye Sweet Carole Worth It?
A Toss Up Between This and a VHS Rental
Bye Sweet Carole is, without a doubt, a toss-up. On one hand, it’s a visual masterpiece; a gorgeously animated, hauntingly whimsical experience brought to life with stellar voice acting and a story that manages to be both macabre and oddly endearing. On the other hand, it’s a clumsily-made game that makes you wish its interactive elements could be separated entirely from the rest of its brilliance.
At its middling $24.99 price tag, it at least feels somewhat fair. Any higher, though, and the value drops off faster than Lana from a mistimed jump. It’s simply not a fun game to play—but if what you’re after is a nostalgia hit wrapped in vintage artistry, it delivers on that front. Whether the ticket for admission is worth it will be up to you.
| Digital Storefronts | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
PSN |
eShop |
eShop |
| $29.99 | |||
Bye Sweet Carole FAQ
Was Bye Sweet Carole Hand-drawn?
Yes. Much like Cuphead, Bye Sweet Carole was completely hand-drawn frame-by-frame, with accompanying painted backgrounds to match.
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Bye Sweet Carole Product Information
 |
|
| Title | BYE SWEET CAROLE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | October 29, 2025 |
| Developer | Little Sewing Machine |
| Publisher | Maximum Entertainment |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) PlayStation 5 Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch 2, |
| Genre | Action, Adventure, Puzzle, Indie |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB Teen |
| Official Website | Bye Sweet Carole Website |
