I have been screaming about wanting a good Disney video game for a decade. The last good one was Brave in 2012, and even then, it was only kinda good. You'd have to go back to Tarzan in 1999 to find the last Disney game that I would push forward as a bona fide 'good Disney game'. I've never vibed with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kingdom Hearts (and even🌄 die-hard would agree that the characterisation of Disney sta⛦rs like Mickey is its weakest part), Epic Mickey felt empty, movie-ties got worse and then died out, and while Infinity had potential, I am sick of nonse🤪nse like Twisted Wondeဣrland and Speedstorm. For all Disney's corporate might, it cannot make a good video game from its classic characters. In steps small Italian studio Little Sewing Machine to show Disney how it’s done with Bye Sweet Carole.

Bye Sweet Carole feels like Alice: Madness Returns but for Sleeping Beauty, if it was in 2D. I hadn't even heard of the game until a few weeks before Gamescom when I was sent an email inviting me to a preview, and I was hooked right from the trailer. It looked perfectly, spectacularly, just like a classic Disney movie. The colours, the backgrounds, those gorgeous eyes, everything was beautiful. But I feared it was too good to be true - the trailer I was sent offered no gameplay. However, it did promise some at Gamescom, so I signed up.

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Aside from the fact the levels are flattened into 2D, everything remains in gameplay. It looks just as it did in the trailer, which the devs explain is the result of every single frame being hand-drawn, with nothing procedurally generated. We play as Lana, an orphan searching for her friend Carole, who mysteriously disappears from their home. Those running the orphanage assume she has run away, but Lana must explore the house and its grounds to uncover the true reason for Carole's sudden absence.

As she does, the art comes into its own creatively, retaining the Disney inspiration but taking on a much darker tone as well. Black, leathery creatures stalk Lana as she explores, while she also gains the ability to transform into a rabbit. Other characters take on other forms too, as the twisted horror underneath Bye Sweet Carole's elegance comes to the fore. It's through this transformation that the puzzle side of Bye Sweet Carole operates - Lana is stronger and more dexterous as a human, but faster, harder to detect, and can jump higher as a rabbit, so both approaches will be necessary to navigate each level.

While the art style scratched the itch of classic animation we don't see much any more, the gameplay itself is a similar throwback - this sort of 2D game with verticality and puzzles made for a less hyper-hardcore audience than, say, Cyber Shadow doesn't tend to exist anymore. The fact it uses such a close-up camera to showcase the intimate details and focus on the characters over the more zoomed out focus on the environments and tricky routes of other 2D games highlight's Bye Sweet Carole's strengths here. Not only that, It shows that for all its inspirations, Bye Sweet Carole understands exactly what it wants to be.

Bye_Sweet_Carole Lana flying in the air

Bye Sweet Carole was a standout game of the show for me, but unfortunately, I don't think many people even knew it was there. It was at a small, tucked away booth, and even the people I mentioned it to at the show didn't recognise the name. I hope that now the gameplay is out and marketing ramps up ahead of its launch on all platforms next year, it generates the buzz it deserves. Classic Disney meets 2D horror should get enough people on board from the pitch alone, and my only criticism of anything I saw was that I would like the scenes to be a little brighter - but pre-alpha footage not being lit as best as possible is hardly a deal-breaker.

Simply put, this is the game that most excited me from the show. It's the one I'm going to be talking about the loudest to the most people in the hopes that they listen. And not because what I saw makes me think this is a safe, nailed on hit. But because it is creative and ambitious and takes the sorts of ideas people want to see and builds something fresh from them. While other games showcased some of the best, most photorealistic graphics known to gamerkind at Gamescom, Bye Sweet Carole was quietly one of the most technically impressive thanks to its painstakingly crafted art, which will likely outlast the cutting edge approach of others as the edge moves further each year.

Bye Sweet Carole Lana kneeling by tree

Bye Sweet Carole is a 2D puzzle game that mixes body horror with Silver Age Disney visuals. That was all I needed to know, and seeing the level design and depth offered by the transformation was a bonus. This has all the makings of a cult hit, and I'm getting in on the ground floor for it.

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