Sayonara Wild Hearts

[Turbo Kid]

No one ever talks about this little indie gem. It feels like a really artsy arcade game with some heavy rhythm game influences. The genre Influences range from classic rail shooters (Star Fox, Rez, Sin & Punishment) to Out Run to endless runners, basically any game with simple, approachable action like you would find in old school arcades. It's been described as a playable music album and the game certainly provides an amazing audio/visual experience that lives up to that with every level being an interactive "track" for you to play through. This is a game that is as fun to watch and listen to as it is to play. The pop soundtrack is amazing and the game has a totally amazing, retro, artsy visual style that is big on distinct use of color and geometric shapes. Google's AI describes it pretty well as "a vibrant, high-contrast, neon-infused aesthetic that creates a unique dreamlike, surreal world of masked, magical characters". Each level really comes to life in a unique way with its own gimmicks. The game gets a bit challenging as things move fast and you have to keep up, especially if you're going for gold ranks where the game's replay value comes into play. This is a game for high score chasers in classic, old school arcade fashion. There are also squares to collect in every stage. And there are fun little riddles for you to solve in each stage by doing things in a certain, specific way. These are tied to the Zodiac as there is a tarot theme running through the whole game. There's also a neat underlying, personal story in this game that you can interpret however you want. One last interesting thing about the game is the narrator:

Cool game that's worth checking out, it's short but has challenging replay value. It's the arcade game philosophy.

Here's some fun levels

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

STAY WILD!

 

[Vexicrypt]

Its one of those games that gets a lot of awards and then vanishes from public eye forever. 3 people that played it really like it, others kinda heard the name and that its good apparently, but haven't played themselves nor planning to.

 

[nobitakun]

I am watching the gameplay and I don't care how many awards does it have, I am not playing that thing. These kind of games are for people who want to say "I played something cool", but I prefer to stick with the classics and stay away from developers who try awkward ideas just to get awards. I know indie genre is for that, but sorry, I still want classic gameplay with original improvements over it, not "I want to do random crazy stuff".

Like when you see fashion catwalk, most of the clothes you're not going to use because they are just dumb, but hey, they get famous for some reason.