How to Say Goodbye

gamedeveloper.com:

How to Say Goodbye is a game about death. Or rather, it's a game about what might await us once we've shuffled off this mortal coil.

The poignant narrative adventure, produced by French duo Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix and inspired by popular illustrated books, asks players to navigate through a liminal world-between-worlds inhabited by lost spirts and other more malevolent beings.

Here, the afterlife is disorienting and curious place filled with grid-based conundrums that exist outside of time and space. To reach the fabled 'other side,' players will need to solve those Rubick's-eque conundrums while grappling with themes of grief and acceptance, guiding their spectral companions to whatever lies beyond.

How to Say Goodbye is currently slated to release later this year, but ahead of the game's launch we caught up with Veltman and Portfaix -- whose previous credits include Monument Valley 2, Assemble with Care, and Oniri Island -- to chat about the art and design beats behind the mediative puzzler.

Game Developer: You've mentioned How to Say Goodbye is inspired by illustrated books, but how difficult was it to translate that art style to the game space?

Veltman and Portefaix: The decision to use illustrated books and the techniques associated with them as an inspiration came naturally from the prototype of the main game mechanics we built early on. We were reusing assets from a previous game, which inspired us to pursue this collage-like, print aesthetic. 

The use of limited color palettes really completed the look we wanted to achieve, but it’s certainly made the process of making assets for the game quite convoluted. The color palettes require all our assets to be designed using CMY colors, which are then