The breakout hit of Apple Arcade upon its debut one year ago, it soon spread to most digital platforms and won an armload of awards for artistic excellence. The resulting work is something more remarkable: a full-fledged pop album born into a video game's body, where level design plays by the same rules as songwriting.

The small Swedish game studio Simogo, whose past hits Device 6 and Year Walk feathered the borders between puzzle games and adventure novels, dubbed the project an 'interactive music video' when it began development five years ago. But a neon-hued city where it's always twilight hour, where the gravest danger is failing to trust your heart, where the streetlamps all pulse to the same rhythm and staying safe is a mere matter of keeping up with the beat.Įven with such glittering charms to recommend it, Sayonara Wild Hearts eludes easy description. Not Washington, D.C., where I've lived for the past decade our infection curve is still the wrong shape.

Lately, though, after I've texted my mom, hugged my partner and given our elderly cat a scratch behind the ears, I've found my evening's respite venturing out into a city left untouched by the moment's menace. From there I moved to Desus & Mero's back catalog, gleefully profane dispatches from a world where bad news felt a little easier to laugh at. Since I don't know when I'll get to see it again safely, I spent my early mental excursions visiting my hometown of New York City, using old seasons of The Real Housewives and Flight of the Conchords to travel down familiar streets frozen in time, years away from the pandemic's stateside arrival.

still advised to stay home as much as possible, televisions and smart devices feel more than ever like flickering portals, promising the addled mind passage to anywhere but our own four walls. If past generations saw their wanderlust reflected in Alice peering down a rabbit hole or Luke Skywalker staring down a sunset, the COVID-era equivalent will almost certainly involve a hero gazing into a screen: With most of the U.S. Sayonara Wild Hearts' protagonist assumes her heroic form as masked avenger The Fool.

Pink, wild hearts