How to Say Goodbye is now available for Nintendo Switch, Steam and mobiles

The next game from ARTE France, Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix is a reflective and sensitive adventure about life, death and mourning

ARTE France, publisher and co-producer and Florian Veltman (Monument Valley 2 / Assemble with Care / Lieve Oma) & Baptiste Portefaix (Oniri Islands), are proud to announce that their game How to Say Goodbye, is now available on Steam (PC/Mac) and Nintendo Switch for €12.99/$12.99 $ and iOS and Android for €4.99/$4.99.

A release trailer is available here:

In How to Say Goodbye, death is only a beginning. The game follows characters moments after their death, confused and lost as they need to accept their passing and move on to the other side.

As a puzzle game, How to Say Goodbye tasks the player with guiding those lost souls through different levels populated by spirits – some benevolent, some not so much. With grid-based puzzles and many obstacles to overcome, the player will have to shift the levels around to help the ghosts reach the exit, symbolized by a door.

From a hospital room to the surface of the moon, the player will follow the story of many different ghosts as they struggle to come to terms with their own demise. By using the grid, the player will be able to move the ghosts around and modify the level, allowing them to interact with the different obstacles blocking their way.

” Puzzle games allow interesting parallels with the question of mourning. A puzzle is something you have to complete by yourself, and the time it takes to complete depends only on your own pace, just like grieving.There is no clear finality, no winner, no loser, just a learning process on how to deal with the loss of a loved one and how to live a better life afterwards”  explained Florian Veltman, co-author and developer of How to Say Goodbye.

While death is a sensitive subject, How to Say Goodbye draws its inspiration from illustration and children’s literature (Tomi Ungerer, Tove Jansson, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Maurice Sendak…) to address it in a poetic and moving way.

“We were inspired by children’s books, which deal with serious subjects in a very direct way, while maintaining a great gentleness […] In our scenario, the missing persons take the form of disoriented ghosts, seeking to leave the limbo in which they are trapped. They must discover, through the player, how to grieve in order to accept their own disappearance and move on” said Baptiste Portefaix, game designer and sound designer of the game.

How to Say Goodbye was available November 3rd 2022 on Steam, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android.

A game directed and produced by Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix, edited and co-produced by ARTE France

About ARTE

Founded in 1992, ARTE is a European public cultural television channel and a digital network focusing on creation and innovation. Over the past ten years, ARTE has co-produced a number of interactive creations such as the games Inua – A story in Ice and Time, Unmaze,  Homo Machine, The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature and Vectronom. More information on the official website and the Twitter page of Arte Interactif.

About Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix

Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix met while studying at the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg. They then each had professional experiences in game development and multimedia.

After creating the award-winning game Lieve Oma, Florian was a designer at Ustwo Games on Monument Valley 2 and Assemble with Care. Baptiste worked as a sound designer and composer, most notably on the award-winning game Oniri Island, a toys-to-life adventure game.