Take for instance the VR-themed levels, in which the heroine comes face-to-face with a lone renegade called Hermit 64, who swiftly transports her to a virtual dreamscape. The soundtrack of Sayonara Wild Hearts is also presented like a concept album, with the songs fronted in-game by preposterously dapper all-girl gangs. "He would come back to me and be like, 'Okay add 30 seconds in, they are going to do this thing so can you maybe change the music here, like make a drop,' or 'Can you add something?' It's a lot of back and forth like that, to get the music and the levels to be very intertwined with each other." “Usually I would just write a lot of short ideas, like 30 seconds to 2 minutes ideas, and then Simon would just listen to these and maybe one of them would sprout some ideas for our level.” Then it was back to writing, where Olsén would work on turning these snippets into full-fledged compositions, often with feedback about the game’s levels from Flesser. “Sometimes I would be given a level and then I would have to write something that fit,” said Olsén.
Since every song is crafted differently, there wasn't a fixed formula to follow when composing the soundtrack or the game's levels. Toss in an off-the-cuff comment to publisher Annapurna Interactive about wanting actress and rapper Queen Latifah to be the game’s narrator, and the ingredients for a fiercely feminine and queer-friendlly Sayonara Wild Hearts were gathered.Īccording to Olsén, nailing the atmosphere of the game involved close collaboration between Simogo and the musicians.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is one of the rare stories where queer women aren’t depicted as hapless or inevitably doomed characters who deserve to be sympathised with and rescued instead, they are the heroines others strive to be or wish to emulate. Then there are the distinctly feminine motifs, like its lavish use of magical girl transformations that bring to mind strongly feminist anime like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Sailor Moon, which are then weaved in with the swoon-worthy, devil-may-care attitude of its girl gangs. Playing a queer woman whose heart ached so much it altered the fabric of time and space, the game is essentially about the underexplored memoir of recovery - a rare balm for the queer community, whose stories in fiction are often so defined by tragedy and death. These decisions behind the music work to amplify the game’s positive messages about queerness and femininity, which are already baked into the game. And we also wanted our singer to be female, too.” The inclusion of vocalist Linnea Olssen, whose panoramic pipes would infuse these jams with a saccharine-sweet and futuristic quality, is the soundtrack’s finishing touch. very men dominated, we wanted to have this game be an all-female cast. “And since most videogames today are just. So we ended up with this long playlist of pop songs,” Olsén explained. “What we do is, usually when we work together, is that we create a playlist on Spotify as inspiration, then we just add songs we think fit thematically. And given that videogames are so male-dominated, from their protagonists to even their music, the soundtrack’s strongly feminine influences felt like a better direction. There was not a original intent to make a game for a queer audience, but we wanted to include everyone.” In fact, the game’s synth pop styling was only decided upon when Simon Flesser, one half of Simogo, was listening to some pop music after a year of experimenting with other music genres. “Probably they follow Taylor Swift and Carly Rae Jepsen, and that was clearly a large inspiration for us. “I think it’s just something that happened, that a lot of queer people like this game,” said Olsén. Instead, they were motivated to make a game that’s just more inclusive.
When I spoke to Daniel Olsén, one of the soundtrack’s composers, he shared that Swedish developer Simogo didn’t intentionally give Sayonara Wild Hearts such a distinct queer vibe. Given that the game is made up of an eclectic mix of genres from side-scrolling shooter to bullet hell, it’s a marvel how much the music is in sync to the movement on screen. It’s a euphoric and unexpectedly emotive experience, brimming with explicitly queer and feminine energy fortified by its bisexual lighting filter of pink, purple and blue, and an electropop soundtrack influenced by the likes of Charli XCX and Chvrches. Pulsating with irrepressible energy, Sayonara Wild Hearts is a music-based arcade game which lets you ride motorcycles and riposte teddy girls, all while balancing on a massive aerial sword that sails through the air at 200mph.
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