SAYONARA WILD HEARTS

Developer Simogo Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format iOS, PS4, Switch

Ask any videogame fan whether there’s one in particular that had an effect on their lives, and you’ll hear a story: how a handheld platformer got them through a family member’s spell in the hospital, or a narrative adventure offered perspective on their problems. The best games are both an escape from the real world, and an entryway back into it. Sayonara Wild Hearts is just that – and it knows it. Simogo’s pop-album-ballet spectacular is a videogame about the power of videogames.

You, as the heartbroken Fool, fall into an alternate dimension of midnight blues and searing pinks, where biker gangs threaten to throw the universe into disarray. To stop them, you give chase on your motorbike, sprint across the sides of skyscrapers, dodge fireballs in dance battles and punch gigantic wolf-mechas in the guts.

It’s what you might ungenerously term an ‘endless runner’ – an invisible string of fate, perhaps, pulling you inexorably along. But, thanks to a pitch-perfect pop soundtrack and eye-popping cosmic choreography that refuses to perform the same trick twice, it eludes simple categorisation. It’s a dizzyingly diverse celebration of videogames’ ability to test, surprise and delight us – even before you come across the cartridges and VR headsets, the cheeky riffs on Mario, Rez, Tetris and Panzer Dragoon.

The neon-shot digital reverie wraps around a tale of someone going through one of the darkest times in her life. As she seeks meaning in the symbols she fights, you follow suit. When she finally realises where it’s all coming from, so do you. And when Sayonara Wild Hearts kisses you goodbye and boots you back into the real world at its close, you’re left quite certain – of the magic at the heart of the art we escape to, see ourselves in, and carry like a sword into our everyday lives.