What an absolutely stunningly cool game.

SWH is like a fever dream, but one that makes you feel exhilarated and uplifted. It’s a playable techno synth pop album of music videos stuffed with neon-flooded imagery and subtext. It’s also a fast, flashy twitch-action rhythm autorunner that’s very gay and very glorious. It’s the best thing I’ve played all year and I can’t stop thinking about it.

You are a heartbroken woman, called by cosmic forces to venture through abstract landscapes, pursuing the usurpers of a mystical power. Along the way there’s setpiece after setpiece loosely inspired by the cards of the tarot, as you ride your transforming motorcycle and pick up little hearts for points. Each stage is a rollicking thrill-ride that’s constantly shifting perspective and throwing new concepts at you.

But it’s still consistent, with a simple streamlined control scheme, and forgiving, with failure only setting you back seconds and an option to skip tricky bits. I didn’t want to miss a single second, although the experience is better if you make no mistakes. The quicktime events are hard to fail, and it’s your choice to replay for better rankings or just do your best and let the game carry you along in its riptide glow.

The encounters with the gallery of boss ladies are a highlight, whether it’s the retro-inspired 2D vector action played out on the exterior of a VR visor, the rolling shmup against a transforming mech, or the memorable parallel-universe-shifting chase. All the while that banging pop soundtrack syncs perfectly with the action, whether it’s Daniel Olsén’s instrumental tracks or his electro-arrangements of Johnathan Eng’s compositions accompanied by the sublime vocal work of Linnea Olsson. The music is the beating heart of SWH, hence its marketing as a “pop album video game”, and it builds to crescendos during these battles.

The culmination of all this is an epic climax revisiting concepts and motifs from the whole game (which can be easily played in a single sitting), which ultimately fulfills the heroine’s journey by subverting it in a positive way before easing you back to reality and leaving you with a hopeful message. But enough pontificating, please give this game a try, or at least watch a competent playthrough of arcade mode. If you’re put off by frantic, disorienting action, wildly flashy colour and light shows, or cycling techno-pop, that’s fair. But you might just find SWH smashes your heart into a million pieces and builds you a new one full of love and appreciation for the small Swedish team that created this joyous experience.