How to Say Goodbye, a puzzler about death and its acceptance, is releasing next month on Android and iOS
Last year, independent developers Florian Veltman (Monument Valley) and Baptiste Portefaix (Oniri Islands) announced they were working together on a game called How to Say Goodbye, a narrative puzzle that deals with the themes of acceptance and moving on through poetry. Today, the developers revealed the game will finally release on November 3rd.
A new teaser was dropped today as well. In How to Say Goodbye, players will find themselves a few moments after their death in a sort of limbo, where they must recount their journey as they enter into a world unknown to them.
The only way to the other side is to accept what's happened. It sounds easy on paper, but accepting your own death? That’s bound to be difficult. Players will have to make the ghosts realise that what occurred cannot be changed and that the only way is forward. Only then, will they make it to the other side, where numerous spirits await.
Describing their ideology of using death in the game, Florian Veltman, said: “Grief is a universal experience unique to each individual, and one that evokes strong emotions. However, in most video games, it is reduced to a violent act: death is used as a metaphor to indicate to the player in an extremely binary way that he loses or wins, that he exists or does not exist anymore. We wanted to approach the subject in a more subtle and positive way, with sensitivity.”
Crossing over will be tough. Players will have to make use of different elements placed on a grid in order to guide the ghost to the exit symbol. Naturally, this way is full of obstacles including other ghosts who couldn’t get to the other side and will not let anyone else pass.
These unking ghosts are called spleens and they seem to be under the control of the wizard, a being about whom not much is known. His influence, although, can be seen throughout the world of How to Say Goodbye.
App Store pages should be here soon, until then, check out their Discord server to stay up to date.
In the end, we can only suggest a list of the best puzzle games on mobile!