Sayonara Wild Hearts wants me to find my groove, to glide through its melodies. I’m almost always successful the second time around. If I miss my cue, song and game blur into a short rewind-pause, inviting me to try again. In this early part of the game, there’s very little in the way of challenge. This is a world of cavorting, jesting joyfulness.įor my media demo, I’m only allowed to play this first level. The music evokes mood, while the on-screen action creates an emotive mix-tape of nostalgia, excitement, story and wonder. From the very first song/level, it’s clear that Sayonara Wild Hearts means to intertwine synthy pop tunes with the gleaming structures of video gaming’s canon.

These disparate elements are stitched together with neon color palette, quick wit, intriguing characters and ultra-tight design. SimogoĪnd then it goes off the rails, so to speak, jangling strangely with short gameplay vignettes that bring to mind a host of gaming standards: beat-em-up, arcade shooter, skateboarder, romance, derby racer and more, before sliding into its lane-running meter that divides one verse from another. Its music is poppy and peppy enough to raise lane running from the humdrum to the pleasurable. Simogo’s Nintendo Switch game is an interactive pop album in which the beats sync and de-sync from on-screen action. It turns out that Wild Hearts’ lane running is merely an introductory percussion, which soon swells into a layered composition of clever, beautiful melodies of sight and sound. My expectations are placed a lot higher than yet another Subway Surfers or a new twist on Temple Run.īut it’s a trick. This is the company behind much-admired mobile rhythm game Beat Sneak Bandit and chilled out narrative The Sailor’s Dream. There’s an irony here, that a developer hailing from mobile games should base its ballyhooed Switch debut on the dreariest of all mobile genres. Unpromisingly, Sayonara Wild Hearts begins as an endless runner.

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