Grief can look different from person to person, but it’s something to which most people can relate. Almost everyone will lose a loved one at some point in their lives. A person’s surviving loved ones may deal with grief in many ways, but what about the deceased person? How would a dead person come to terms with death? An upcoming game called How to Say Goodbye explores this question. Today, publisher ARTE France revealed that the narrative puzzle game How to Say Goodbye is coming to Switch, Steam, Android, and iOS next month.
What is How to Say Goodbye?
How to Say Goodbye is directed and produced by Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix. The game follows a recently deceased man as he transitions into the afterlife. It is the player’s job to aid him in this process by solving various puzzles. However, this is easier said than done, according to today’s press release.
The player will have to help the ghost accept his death and pass to the other side in this liminal space after life, populated by various spirits, some of them benevolent.
To do so, they will have to move the different game elements on a grid to guide the ghost to the exit symbolized by a door. But many obstacles will stand in their way, and lost spirits will try to stand in their way.”
These aforementioned spirits have already given up on moving on by the time the game begins. However, not every character you will meet will try to stop you. The protagonist will also encounter multiple helpful ghosts along the way. In fact, the game wants to challenge common ideas about death and grief with an overall more optimistic tone.
“‘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’ explains Florian Veltman, designer of How to Say Goodbye.”
The narrative puzzle game How to Say Goodbye is coming to Steam, Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS on November 3.