‘Sayonara Wild Hearts’ is More Than a Playable Pop Album
Music has been a dominating force in my life for as long as I can remember. I picked up my first guitar when I was in 7th grade, and by 9th grade, I was playing concerts in my hometown with makeshift rock bands. For years, I felt that playing music was my life’s passion and that my career would revolve around music in some capacity. But at some point throughout college, that passion died down into a hobby, which died down to where I can see dust accumulating on my instruments. Podcasts took over my headspace, and months started to go by where I’d forget that I have an entire music library at my fingertips.
Playing Sayonara Wild Hearts has been like an adrenaline needle to the heart of my now dormant love for music. I picked it up on a whim, because Annapurna Interactive is one of my favorite publishers whose games are always excellent. I began Sayonara Wild Hearts with tepid enthusiasm, but by the time I reached the title screen, I was already sold. Like the game’s main character, Sayonara pulled me out of my sleepy, comfortable room, and thrust me into a nearly psychedelic headspace that didn’t relent for an entire hour.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is an interactive album that pairs its arcade-like levels with its soundtrack. Much of the gameplay is synchronized to the music, and oftentimes levels will require various button timings that will be familiar to fans of rhythm games. The gameplay formula is largely iterative but I still find myself messing certain sections up – and I have played the game to completion about 10 times. There is a narrative that threads these songs and levels together, but most of the narrative development takes place either visually or lyrically. The only explicit story that Sayonara Wild Hearts provides bookends the story with the excellent narration by Queen Latifah. It’s a story about a young woman who fell out of love, and through a series of emotional trials, falls “back into her groove.”
It isn’t difficult to describe what kind of game that Sayonara Wild Hearts is, but I personally find it difficult to explain why it impacted me so positively. On its surface, you might cynically write the game off as a mobile game, given the fact that it was first playable on an iPhone. Whether on mobile, console, or desktop (and yes, I bought a copy for both my Switch and Steam libraries after experiencing it on Apple Arcade), playing Sayonara Wild Hearts is not as straightforward as it initially appears. The simple interactive mechanics that the gameplay provides are easy to learn, but difficult to master. You steer your character towards various hearts that function like arcade tokens or coins, and collecting them increases your score which becomes your rank at the end of each level. At the time of this writing, I have earned Silver Ranks on every single track throughout the game, but it’s rare that I can nail a Gold Rank – not to mention the fabled Wild Rank.
Pop music has always turned me off from mainstream music and culture, but the music in Sayonara Wild Hearts is like an audible dessert. Every part of the game’s soundtrack blends together, evolves, and leaves me wanting more each time I play it. It reminds me of musical artists like Lights, Made in Heights, and Now, Now. I find myself walking around at work, tending the garden, or cooking dinner, and I’ll be humming one of the tracks from Sayonara Wild Hearts. I finish what I’m doing, boot up the game to play the song that’s stuck in my head, and all of a sudden I am playing the entire game again.
Bear Traps of Catchy
When I played music actively, one of my friends described their band as “bear traps of catchy,” the joke being that their music was like a deadly snare for the unaware. In the same way, Sayonara Wild Hearts caught me off guard as a simple experience I had an aesthetic interest in, which became a compelling feedback loop of trying to beat my own previous scores all whilst reliving some of the best music in 2019 gaming.
The songs which became the bear traps that caught me are the reason this game reaches so high in my considerations for 2019’s Game of the Year conversation. Immediately, the title theme, “Sayonara Wild Heart,” had me looping it on the main menu of the game before I even hit play. “Begin Again” speaks to one of the hardest parts of starting over from scratch with relationships: trying to recreate the emotions and connections you have lost. “Dead of Night” transforms the soundtrack into an urgent struggle for survival against what feels like a proper boss battle in the game, weaponizing synthy EDM influences and thundering dubstep bass wobbles.
“Mine” is my favorite song in the entire game, and thematically highlights the trophy aspect of romantic partnerships, where many toxic people want to possess their partner rather than reciprocate a relationship with them. At first I heard it as a cheerful celebration but then, once internalizing the lyrics, “your wild heart glitters / your mad eyes shine / you fit so perfectly / with all the golden things of mine,” reveals the jealous and insecure nature of people who treat their partners like jewelry to show off rather than human beings.
“The World We Knew,” helps me come to terms with my own personal romantic grief every time I reach the moment when the song refrains, “they say ‘begin again.’” The tone makes me reflect on the entire journey of the game, as well as my own experiences, and has made my hair stand up on more than one occasion. “Wild Hearts Never Die” is a short-but-sweet ending celebration, a triumphant anthem to cleanse all of the emotional turbulence of the early game. As the main character falls back into her groove, so does the soundtrack by the end.
A Dance Between Gameplay and Music
On top of these songs all being excellent, the addition of gameplay enhances certain moments and causes me to feel more fondly for them as a result. In “Begin Again,” for example, the gameplay changes from a motorbike chase to a Superman-like flight throughout a hellish cavern ripped open in the street below. Toward the end of this level, there are timed button presses that, as the song concludes, emphasize the impact of the journey you have just taken with the opposing character.
One of my favorite takes on Sayonara Wild Hearts was by a YouTuber that titled her stream, “Lesbian Sword Dancing.” Not only is that a somewhat literal description of the abstract but human story that the game wants to tell, it’s also a hilariously oversimplified caricature. All of the characters you’ll meet throughout the game’s main story are either clearly women or otherwise androgynous. Most of the characters you will face are antagonistic and threatening – even when described as “allies” – but some are innocent and alluring. Most of your interactions with these characters will be through timed button presses that are mapped to the rhythm of the current song, and these button presses usually require you to dodge or parry an incoming attack – with variations between an “OK!” button press and a “Perfect!” one.
Musical Albums, Arcade-Style Games, and Replayability
I keep coming back to Sayonara Wild Hearts for the combination of music, gameplay, and art style, but one thing above all that keeps me playing is the ridiculous amount of endgame content that it provides. Regular readers of Epilogue will be familiar with my general apathy towards achievements in gaming. (I believe I have a total of 2 PlayStation platinum trophies and 6 100% achievements on Steam, out of my library of nearly 1,000 games, for instance.) But Sayonara Wild Hearts blends its lore (tarot cards) with its achievement system, requiring ludicrously specific tasks to be completed in order to unlock their astrologically named achievements (e.g. Leo, Gemini, etc.). I went out of my way to spin a wheel backwards 10 times just to get an achievement – not because I care about the achievement, but because this game has more to offer and I want to experience it for myself. As much as I think tarot cards and astrology are ridiculous, they frame a compellingly supernatural framework for Sayonara Wild Hearts’ story, gameplay, and setting.
The art style of Sayonara Wild Hearts blows most 2019 games out of the water. The main color palette features blues, purples, and pinks, with tons of variation within that general neon framework. Each level looks straight out of Tron with its worldbuilding and use of both lighting and color. Every single character design is distinct and memorable, from your main character, The Fool, to your many antagonists and allies throughout the game. I think of Little Death instead of the Dancing Devils or Howling Moons, for instance. The fact that these wordless characters still occupy separate mental space for me is an achievement of the game’s visual design.
I don’t think everyone reading this will love Sayonara Wild Hearts, and many more people will not love it as dearly as I have this year. Upon completing my first playthrough, I was a bit disappointed that the game clocked in at about the one hour mark. But the immense replayability that I feel this game provides – including a locked bonus mode – keeps this game alive in both my imagination and playlist. I have a feeling that Sayonara will grab the hearts of many people like it did mine.
Having spent a month replaying this game often, I once again feel reconnected to the emotional resonance that music provides to us as human beings. I feel revitalized that music is something I actively look forward to again. Who would have thought it would be a video game instead of a proper album that would bring that part of my identity back to life?
Annapurna Interactive continues to be on the front lines of publishing top tier narrative games by remarkably small developers, and though Sayonara Wild Hearts leads with its music, it leaves you with its story. Even as I type these words, I am listening to the soundtrack, and I’m resisting the urge to stop writing and start playing through its fantastic soundscape yet again. In a year where I thought Cadence of Hyrule was a clear winner for best video game soundtrack, Sayonara Wild Hearts blasted through with something equally – if not more – excellent and impressive.
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