Publisher Just For Games and co-developers Little Sewing Machine and Meangrip Studios announced a delay for Bye Sweet Carole, their classic animation-inspired horror game.

The hand-animated horror game will forgo its previously planned 2024 release for one sometime in 2025. Bye Sweet Carole will launch for PC (via Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PS4, and PS5.

“We’ve been working hard to deliver a beautiful and emotional game, but as anyone who has made a game before knows, it’s no easy task,” the companies said in an update. “This is why we’ve made the tough decision to move Bye Sweet Carole’s release to 2025. This will give us the proper time to continue improving the quality of the gameplay and art that made you fall in love with the project in the first place.”

Here’s the various parts of the game the team is working on improving:

• Lighting Effects – We received some feedback on our game being too dark. We agree, it was! We listened and added more lighting effects to give every scene the clarity it deserves to show off the gorgeous art…
• User Interface – In our last update we shared a newer version of the UI, but we weren’t done iterating. We did extensive research to determine the best UI for the game because you’ll be able to control and transform several characters, so the UI needed to work for each one. During this time, we also took our time to revamp the entire menu system as well as the game’s HUD. Please note that this may not be final, but it’s much closer to what we would like! Please, have a look on our Steam page where all the 4K screenshots have been updated to reflect more examples of the new UI and all other mentioned effects. We’re really proud of what we achieved.
• Cutscene Rework – We are spending more time to rework every animation frame from every cutscene (and there are quite many, trust us!) to align the work of our wonderful 2D artists and present a cohesive art style for the project.
• Gameplay Reworks – We’ve reworked much of the gameplay to give you a tense feeling while playing. We want your senses heightened like they would with any great horror game or movie. Whether that’s when you are holding Lana’s breath, hiding or battling it out with Mr. Kyn and other enemies that you may encountered during your journey.