Bye Sweet Carole Reviews
You have to look at things from another perspective. A simple, overused phrase, but essential for best understanding Bye Sweet Carole. A game that must be viewed with the right sensitivity, accepting its imperfections, but also embracing its soul. The gameplay is functional but basic, at times imprecise, with moments that struggle to bear the weight of the atmosphere built around it. Some sequences are repetitive or uninspired, and technically there are small and large flaws. But if we turn a blind eye to the strictly playful aspect, what remains is an elegant, touching story, narrated with a rare visual taste, a timeless sensitivity, and a strong and recognizable authorial vision that runs through every frame like a signature. The writing touches on delicate themes without rhetoric. The atmosphere enchants without needing to explain itself. There is a precise hand behind it all, knowing when to hold back and when to strike. Sometimes, to really see, you just need to close one eye and let your heart do the watching.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Bye Sweet Carole offers gorgeous animation and a touching premise alongside some solid puzzles, but its padded pacing, cheap stealth, and lackluster combat drag this storybook tale down.
Beneath the mass of visual bugs, truncated controls and somewhat questionable performance, there is still a good game, but it failed to reach 100% of its ambition despite its extremely sharp visuals, interesting and surprisingly current narrative.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Bye Sweet Carole is fine, but it doesn’t live up to the hype. Overall, it’s just aggressively fine; it’s not super fun to play, but it is really gorgeous. I hope the developers keep working on this game.
Bye Sweet Carole is a very frustrating gaming experience. The adventure is really beautiful, but the impressive appearance alone cannot save the game. The clumsy controls, the back and forth trotting and running away from monsters cause ultimate irritation, so it doesn't matter how beautiful the adventure looks. The thing would work better as a movie: Bye Sweet Carole is nice to watch, but not to play.
Review in Finnish | Read full review
Bye Sweet Carole still needs work, and it shows. Truth be told, though, a few quality-of-life upgrades – controls and hints – would be more than enough to potentially turn this game into one of those titles I come back to over and over again as years go by. Because don’t get me wrong, I am impressed with Bye Sweet Carole as is. But I can’t help imagining what it could be with a few tweaks.
Unfolding like a classic Disney tale, this is a beautifully animated adventure that weaves a deeply personal tale. Bye Sweet Carole is driven by its art style and a brilliant musical score, but occasionally stumbles due to stiff controls and frustrating mechanics.
"Bye Sweet Carole is an ambitious game that shoots for the moon and ends up among the stars. The Disney-style presentation is damn near flawless and evokes a sense of childish nostalgia that hardly any game has managed to do before. Not to mention, it's a pretty competent puzzler that feels cut from the same cloth as LucasArts classics in many ways. However, due to a slew of technical issues and some of the most cumbersome and unsatisfying platforming, stealth, and action sequences I can recall enduring, the game undoes a lot of its fine work to ultimately end up being a unique, but rather average experience."
Bye Sweet Carole is a different, addictive, fresh story worthy of applause in a world where taking risks deserves to be applauded. A truly unforgettable experience that proves you can do different things without needing massive budgets. Chris Darril has created something unique that masterfully blends the nostalgia of classic animation with modern mechanics.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Bye Sweet Carole delivers on the promise of a narrative-driven horror experience with the visual inspiration for classic Disney cartoons. Though it succeeds in this endeavor, it falls short of keeping you engaged with frustratingly unresponsive controls and easy stalker encounters.
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Bye Sweet Carole is a delightful marriage of classic Disney films and the best horror adventure games of the past. Some maps have a punishing level design, and a few bottlenecks pop up, but the execution is consistently excellent.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The rating you find below represents the other angle I chose to see, where the flaws outweigh the merits. Because I believe it's worth letting yourself be transported into this world of "pitch, ash, and coal."
Review in Italian | Read full review
Clearly the game is taking aim at the Disney Princess archetype, but the shots fired are all so clunky and obvious: One girl accidentally drops her manifesto for women’s liberation in front of the teacher, and later she reads from a book that just lists the names of accomplished women throughout history. If horror is meant to elicit strong emotions, the most that Bye Sweet Carole can manage is cringe.
Whether you're looking for a heartfelt story, puzzles to solve, or beautiful visual design, Bye Sweet Carole has it all.
If you've watched the trailer for Bye Sweet Carole, you've seen the best parts of Bye Sweet Carole. The game takes a demo's worth of content and stretches it out over four painfully long hours.
It is not a monster of longevity, it does not have a high replayability, some puzzles are less brilliant and some passages are slightly slower, causing a loss of rhythm, but it is a work that, even with its small imperfections, fully convinces from beginning to end, managing to be one of the most convincing productions of this crowded 2025 .
Review in Italian | Read full review
Bye Sweet Carole is a daring but not perfect game. It tries to replicate the tones and aesthetics of classic animated films but can't reach to the high standard made by them neither technically nor narratively.
Gorgeous hand-drawn horror adventure worth checking out on PlayStation 5
Bye Sweet Carole is a good reminder of why indie developers have a special place in the horror genre. We are faced with a game that brings a different experience of fear thanks to its own unique presentation. Relying on the artistic approach of classic animations, utilizing attractive fantasy horror elements and creating creative puzzles, this work has definitely made it memorable and distinctive. Of course, we are not necessarily facing a perfect game; there are various potentials in the gameplay that have not been used, and also some story dimensions are sometimes confusing or redundant. Nevertheless, Bye Sweet Carole is a risky and very respectable experience in the horror genre that is especially recommended to fans of titles like Clock Tower.
Review in Persian | Read full review