Sayonara Wild Hearts devs on keeping the controls simple

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a visual and audio feast for the eyes. There's really nothing else quite like it on Switch. It's a gorgeous rhythm game that tries to attack the player with sights and sounds, rather than complex controls. In an interview with Gamasutra, Simogo co-founder Simon Flesser explains why it was important to keep the controls as simple as possible.

“Almost all of our games have had the same core idea for controls–we always design them so that you could put it into the hands of person who have not ever played a game before. That doesn't stop us from getting inspired by other games. But [by] thinking about controls like a total reset, you'll get something both unique and inviting.

It was the simplicity that allowed us to add all these different elements. It's introduced slowly, so players understand early on that new objects don’t need new interactions, or more buttons. We shaved off interactions that strayed from the basic interactions -- both the cannons and the bow and arrow involved more interactions for a long time -- but we'd always come back to those things and remove and redesign functions so they'd always work with our core inputs and design. This allowed us to never once have a traditional tutorial during the entire game."