Sayonara Wild Hearts is a rhythm action video game developed by Simogo and published by Annapurna Interactive.

Described as a "pop album video game", Sayonara Wild Hearts follows the story of a heartbroken young woman through a surrealistic landscape.

Each level of the game is set to a song, with the player guiding the woman while collecting hearts, avoiding obstacles, and fighting enemies.

The game was released for iOS, macOS and tvOS through Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 in September 2019, for Windows in December 2019, and for Xbox One in February 2020.

In each level, the player controls the main character as they automatically travel through a surrealistic landscape alongside a pop music soundtrack.

Other levels may require the player to move a cursor on screen to target a bow-and-arrow weapon to defeat enemies, in a manner similar to Rez.

[2] In an alternate universe watched over by three divine arcana of the Tarot (The High Priestess, The Hierophant, and The Empress), a cursed arcanum named Little Death (Death), and her allies, the Dancing Devils (The Devil), the Howling Moons (The Moon), the Stereo Lovers (The Lovers), and Hermit64 (The Hermit), stole all harmony, and hid it in their hearts.

After she chases them the quartet howls to summon a pack of wolves, and the heroine equips her motorbike with dual automatic guns (Justice and Judgement).

The villainess sends flying skulls (The Hanged Man) after the heroine, but she summons a bow (Temperance) and shoots them down, and likewise survives the electrified obstacles in the path (The Sun).

[1] They looked back to classic arcade games to consider their control schemes to come up with simple gameplay elements that only had the player manipulating the character with a joystick or through a touchscreen, and a single button press for certain actions, such as jumping or performing fighting moves.

With the latter button mechanic, they found this allowed them to include the visual indicators on screen to help let players know the right time to perform these actions, enabling the various choreographed fighting sequences in some levels.

Simogo had not considered endless runners as a base, but instead looked to rail shooters such as Sin and Punishment, Space Harrier, and Star Fox which mixed both movement and shooting controls.

About midway through, Annapurna Interactive approached Simogo for publishing support, and with their funding, were able to hire two additional programmers to help complete the game's development.

[4] As Simogo neared the end of production, Flesser had been in discussion with Annapurna about how they wished they had someone unexpected to narrate the brief lines they had for the story.

A few weeks later, within a month of release, Annapurna had been able to secure Queen Latifah for a voice recording session, to Flesser's surprise.

[36] Edge thought that track "Mine" sounded like "a parallel-universe chart-topper", while "The World We Knew" "a gorgeous, swooning, sigh of a ballad.

[38] Jenna Stoeber of Polygon thought that Sayonara was "much more style than substance", but that the visuals and soundtrack were strong enough to justify a playthrough.

[40] Nicole Clark of Vice thought that the ending of Sayonara was a departure from the usual hero's journey in a fictive narrative.