{"id":116438,"date":"2020-08-07T15:40:07","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T15:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=33kvkagk"},"modified":"2020-08-07T15:40:07","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T15:40:07","slug":"behind-the-design-sayonara-wild-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/08\/07\/behind-the-design-sayonara-wild-hearts\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Sayonara Wild Hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Art can reflect emotions we can\u2019t process in spoken word alone: Paintings capture these feelings in color and scale, films reflect our world back to us through new light, and music puts melody to the words we don\u2019t know how to \u2014 or cannot \u2014 say.<\/p>\n

The road of relationships is particularly well-traveled where art is concerned. Sayonara Wild Hearts<\/em>, however, uses the approachability of the topic and transforms it into an exploration on lost love, finding independence, and moving on. Ever-shifting gameplay and an electrifying beat capture the stages of reflecting on a broken relationship, illuminated by a psychedelic canvas of bright rainbow colors and geometric shapes. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a game that is very much about the music,\u201d says Simon Flesser, who along with his co-founder Gordon Gardeb\u00e4ck makes up the game company Simogo. While the two have often created playlists of brainstorm music and scoring for their games, the conceit for Sayonara<\/em> was unique: What if you could take the ubiquity of the breakup album and make it interactive through the best tropes of 80s and 90s arcade games?<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe wanted everything in the game to echo that sense of approachability,\u201d Flesser says. \u201c[And] we naturally fell into the idea of wanting to make something that felt like the arcade games we great up with and played when we were young.\u201d Games like Star Fox<\/em> provided inspiration for the team, as did the musical integration through titles like Rez.<\/em> \u201cWe [also] often try to find inspiration in things we don\u2019t necessarily like, but see the potential in,\u201d Flesser says. \u201cWe looked at games that use video a lot\u2026 where those game fail in interactivity, they really succeed in spectacle. So we wanted to try and capture that feeling, while not losing the feeling of being in constant control of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

To capture the musical foundation for the game, Simogo began with a large playlist of music that represented the essence of the project. \u201cIt started very differently, with a much more sinister tone,\u201d Flesser tells us. The game\u2019s prototype reflected this darker style \u2014 until, one day, an overly energetic pop song from the playlist came into rotation during a playtest. <\/p>\n

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Early concept art for Sayonara Wild Hearts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIt just clicked,\u201d Flesser says. \u201cI literally said [to the team], \u2018This is it.\u2019\u201d They began writing original pop songs around this new tone the very next day. And as the new songs came into focus, the prototype\u2019s color scheme began to shift as well. \u201c[The songs] were in hues of purple and pink and blue,\u201d Flesser says. \u201cIt painted the game for us, the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Go with what your heart tells you and what your gut tells you\u2026 Because I think that’s the only way that you will get something that feels like it has something to say or that it’s an honest piece of work\u2026 once you start thinking too much about what you’re making and what you’re trying to say with it, then there’s some kind of intangible magic lost because the project needs to tell you what it is instead of you telling the project what it is.<\/p>\n

Simon Flesser, Simogo<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Simogo continued playing with recognizable themes and objects as the team refined characters for Sayonara.<\/em> \u201c[Characters] are all based on cards from the Major Arcana deck,\u201d Flesser says. The tarot cards also influenced some of the broader conceptual designs and bigger items like the vehicles driven by various game characters.<\/p>\n

Within the tarot card frame, Sayonara<\/em>\u2019s distinctive colors and geometric shapes create contrast between characters and the background, providing crisp views as people play through the game\u2019s chapters with taps and swipes. \u201cWe needed to work with very simple shapes and distinctive colors because it’s just swooshing by\u2026 you can’t have much detail,\u201d says Flesser. \u201cWe worked a lot with the contrast between dangerous stuff, positive stuff, characters, vehicles.\u201d Each of these items was both differently colored and shaped to provide the maximum best possible contrast.<\/p>\n

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Because the game moves so fast, it was imperative to create controls both easy to follow and intuitive to use. As such, the team intentionally kept the controls platform agnostic. This also helps the game live equally at home on a touchscreen, third-party game controller, or Apple TV remote. \u201cWe opted for a more swiped base input for gameplay so that the player avatar moves when the player actually moves their finger,\u201d Flesser says. <\/p>\n

Swipe controls continued to evolve as the team tested prototypes, with the game\u2019s constant camera movements and zooms being a particular challenge. “We definitely learned a lot about feedback in 3D space versus 2D space,\u201d Flesser says. \u201cThe same type of movement will feel radically different depending on how far away the camera is [and] how much the camera moves versus how much it rotates around its own axis or around the player avatar axis.\u201d<\/p>\n

To smooth the experience, Simogo adjusted swipe responsivity and feedback to the camera\u2019s active perspective and zoom level, while keeping the character in the same relative space.<\/p>\n

Together, this kind of care and design work in harmony to make Sayonara Wild Hearts<\/em> a standout game on Apple platforms. Flesser had this to say about the game\u2019s journey to Apple Design Award-winner:<\/p>\n

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We always just want to make something that you enjoy yourself. And if you do something you enjoy yourself, then chances are that there might be one or two other people that will enjoy it as well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sayonara Wild Hearts<\/a><\/p>\n

Download Sayonara Wild Hearts<\/a><\/p>\n

Learn more about Sayonara Wild Hearts on the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Art can reflect emotions we can\u2019t process in spoken word alone: Paintings capture these feelings in color and scale, films reflect our world back to us through new light, and music puts melody to the words we don\u2019t know how to \u2014 or cannot \u2014 say. The road of relationships is particularly well-traveled where art is concerned. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}