Sayonara Wild Hearts

Sayonara Wild Hearts turns the mobile screen into a concert stage – the player controls a motorbike ride, passage between tarot cards, or flight through the air, while synth-pop music thunders around them, its beat setting the rhythm for every movement on the screen. The touch controls are simple – swipes to the sides, taps at the right moment – but the game combines them with a constantly shifting perspective and genre from level to level, so within a few minutes it moves from a race to a rhythm shooter and back again, always precisely in time with the music, without the player ever having to adjust anything or learn a new control scheme.

The Swedish studio Simogo, also behind Device 6 and Year Walk, released the game in 2019 as its most ambitious project yet and framed it literally as a concept album – individual levels function like tracks, the main heroine goes through an emotional breakdown processed through the symbolism of cards and a neon, dreamlike visual style full of color contrasts and quick cuts between scenes. On mobile the game came out somewhat later than on consoles and PC, but thanks to its straightforward one- or two-finger controls it works surprisingly natural and fluid on a touchscreen.

Critical reception was exceptionally positive, with many reviews ranking it among the best-styled audiovisual experiences of its generation regardless of the platform it was played on, and the game also appeared on year-end lists outside the gaming press.

Why play it: For players who want a short but intense audiovisual experience – a game to enjoy more like an album than a challenge to spend hours on.