How To Say Goodbye
Environments are varied and imaginatively realised, ranging from a kitchen to an airport terminal. Some have physics-based objects you can knock around, though they can occasionally obscure characters and level furniture
We’re not exactly short on indie games about grief and loss, but this whimsical afterlife, conjured up by Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix, has a couple of tricks to set it apart from the rest. The clue to the first is in the game’s title, in the names of its characters – such as the sweet, doddering Bruna, the nervy Sendak, the cheeky but affectionate Tove, and the celestially fixated Exupéry – and in its dithered, picture-book aesthetic. Yes, this puzzler hews towards a younger audience, coming across as an earnest attempt to help children deal with the difficult emotions that accompany the death of a loved one. Its second trick is to take a rather literal approach to the idea of moving on: rather than guide its characters directly, you shuttle them around on conveyor belts, grabbing and releasing to navigate a succession of wraparound isometric stages.