SEGA Releases Playable April Fools Game, "The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog"

Finished it.

Definitely a huge game which it's hard to believe it's a freeware after all. I think the only two major complaints I have are that the mini-game can be awful annoying sometimes, and I've also noticed the game partially crashed after a few conversations sometimes, getting me stuck for some good 15–30 seconds without I'm being able to do something before it proceeded.

19 minutes ago, Solister said:

 

  Hide contents

Also, unless I didn't catch some detail (which is very likely), was there any actual hint to suspect him at first? Because every character looked like to had good pros and cons.

Absolutely fantastic treat. I hope nobody sleeps on this, shrugging it off as "another stupid social media team meme thing" by the title (not that I'm among such folks, it's so inherently funny).

Once you're past that, what we have here is just full-on character fanservice with just utterly outstandingly charming artwork throughout.  I sure bloody hope nothing in the future keeps this from being canon because how lovely it all was.

Major spoilers:

That’s was utterly amazing from start to finish, loved the art work, LOVED the characterization and interactions, a actual official game that’s JUST a day in the life of Sonic and his friends hanging out being silly is so satisfying to finally have. And honestly the new waiter character wasn’t bad either, he had a lot of good charming and funny lines, this whole game was really hilarious actually, the funniest a game has been probably ever.

Also the fact that this free game has a more mechanically AND narratively satisfying final boss than Frontiers actually kills me. I actually felt something at the end!

10/10 my only criticism is that I can’t financially support it because I would’ve tossed down at least 10-15 because damn it I WANT MORE STUFF LIKE THIS 

ARGH.  I got stuck on a minigame so I gave up after failing at it a dozen times. :.  I wish there was a way to bypass those.  It's otherwise a really cute game!

This was delightful. 2 Hours of fan-service for no other reason than because they could. Even better because the game kinda sidelines Sonic for a bit to let the others shine.

So many fun little tidbits that feel right at home in the franchise.

Just finished the game and blown away with what they've put together here.

For an April Fools Day game I expected something along the lines of Big's Big Fishing Adventure 3, a tiny over-the-top silly game for some quick laughs. Instead, they've given us a free game that I clocked in at nearly 3 hours at beat, and fits in perfectly with the canon Sonic world once you get past the deliberately silly title and learn the full context. Some of the situations are fittingly silly but there's equally some great character interaction and some genuine heart put into some of the story beats.

I really hope this is a sign of them starting to have fun with these characters again. I've never actually played this genre of mystery-solving games but I could definitely see myself playing more, and I think this is a great indicator that the Sonic world is strong enough to branch into unconventional spinoff territory. I'd be more than willing to pay for budget title spin-offs like this if they're willing to make them.

Also this is possibly the best these characters have looked in a long time, I absolutely adore the art style. If they ever do an illustrated game cover in future, THIS is style I'd want to see.

 

Thread by Katie about this game

44 minutes ago, babsiwuff said:

ARGH.  I got stuck on a minigame so I gave up after failing at it a dozen times. :.  I wish there was a way to bypass those.  It's otherwise a really cute game!

In the Options, you can adjust the difficulty of the "THINK" minigames. You can enable invincibility / remove bottomless pits if that helps!

The Spriters Resource has already uploaded the art/reactions of Amy and Blaze. (Sonic was currently pending as of typing this statement.)

I do like the texture they added. It gives them an almost...Storybook style to them.

I thought it was pretty funny how we got to see a new side to certain characters like Blaze. She's usually portrayed as serious, rather cold, or keeping to herself since she's new to the whole finding friends stuff.

How they lean into the fact that she's a princess is honestly pretty fun, through how they just generally make her somewhat demanding, and making everything as 'official' as possible. I wasn't expecting one of the biggest laughs being suggesting:

Even Espio got some new fun details, like intentionally speedreading to screw with Knuckles if he's reading a book, or how he tries to use poetry to slip insults at people.

This took me by complete surprise when I saw it posted online. Played through it and yeah, it's pretty fun! I didn't expect it to be so long for a free title. Took me 2.5 hours to finish. I went in thinking it would be a 10 minute meme game. The art style was one of the strongest points to me, but I am a very visual person ^^;

As DaBigJ noted, I noticed as well that the game had no DRM (it was the first thing I checked, admittedly) and applaud them for that. After the recent SEGA offerings all having Denuvo, it was nice to see that this didn't even have Steam DRM or nothing.

So yeah, I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it yet. Though this being SSMB, and it being free, I imagine most have plans to check it out if they haven't already. I don't know if there's much to say about the gameplay as it's mostly text based with some amusing special stage type segments. Honestly, just amazed that they went out of their way to make a very solid little visual novel free as a meme. Little things like this is why I love Sonic and SEGA. You'd never see someone like Nintendo pulling stuff like this. Really shows that they love their fans.

Excluding the THINK gameplay, especially at the end, this was an entertaining Sonic VN. 

I said this earlier in the statuses and earlier on Retro and earlier on Twitter, but this is the best Sonic thing in years and years.

This is the blend of comedy, tension, character interactions, lore, all of it, that they've been looking for. It's right here! I could only hope this little goofy experiment ends up being really successful, because I really hope it influences their storytelling for future games. If not the main games, then at the very least future visual novels like this.

And everyone acts themselves in ways I haven't seen in years! It's been such a sight for sore eyes to see

Just made me so overwhelmingly happy. And then

Just holy shit, bros. We just got FED. When's the last time we've been FED?!

7 minutes ago, azoo said:

Just holy shit, bros. We just got FED. When's the last time we've been FED?!

Last year.

1 hour ago, Kaze no Klonoa said:

In the Options, you can adjust the difficulty of the "THINK" minigames. You can enable invincibility / remove bottomless pits if that helps!

Oh can you??  That’s fantastic!  I’ll try that, thank you!

11 minutes ago, DaBigJ said:

19 minutes ago, azoo said:

Just holy shit, bros. We just got FED. When's the last time we've been FED?!

Last year.

The powers and devs that be have been keeping good momentum on the series' reputation lately. Dandy.

Just played through it and yeah, this is great.

Like everyone has said, the character interactions in this are some of the best I've seen from the series in general. Hats of to Mutchler. Sega's decision to let the comic side do more with the series continues to be one of the best moves they've made in recent times.

With this and Frontiers, I really, really hope this direction continues with literally everything they do next. Because honestly, after this, it's honestly going to hurt a lot more whenif they fuck up on the narrative side again.

Also pretty big spoiler for the end:

All this in a free April Fools joke too... like fuck man. I know at the end of the day Sonic is really just a massive PR effort for Sega these days but real talk, gg.

I didn't expect that thing at the end... wait nope, i didn't expect ANY OF THIS. After years of doing the joke "Tails is dead", they actually went with "Sonic is murdered" instead. I thought this was such a cool concept for a game to be honest.

Every character was fun and charming to read, the costumes/designs were really great, this is kind of a given but Knuckles with the hat as the sheriff... top! Even though it's not the first time they've been doing it since OVA.

Only thing... the minigame, it would have been more fun if there were more minigames with the other characters other than Sonic running through a special stage kind of. But this is a free game, it's already bigger than I thought it would be since it's a joke.

I also really liked the cast they picked, although it's missing Big the Cat but I will forgive them, I kind of expected his cameo because nowadays he's everywhere.

More of this stuff please!

So, uh, someone tell me if I'm overthinking this, but...

(Major Spoilers)

1 hour ago, Kellan said:

So, uh, someone tell me if I'm overthinking this, but...

(Major Spoilers)

  Hide contents

Is it weird that they killed the Train? Like they go out of their way to explain that the thing's sentient, they even use the word "sentient"... and then Amy smashes it with her hammer. I thought they generally didn't destroy the self-aware ones?

Also, it seemed odd that the final boss in this detective game didn't involve any detective work. I thought that the conclusion they were building towards was obvious. You were going to have to find clues one last time, or maybe use the clues you gathered along the way, and you would have to prove to the Train, using evidence, that it was, in fact, acting selfishly. You would still have those super hard minigames, as normal, to convey how hard the argument is.

Instead, you just break it, and none of the characters seem to have any sort of... I don't know, awareness of the fact that they just ended a sentient creature's existence? Like, was there some dissonance at the end for anyone else, or was that just me.

Like, they went out of their way to show that Tails felt empathy for books but the Train gets nothing?

I wouldn't say overthinking but perhaps expecting a bit more from the story than they were going for!

Yeah, you're probably right.

Never in all my life did I EVER think that a game released for April Fools' Day, let alone one called "The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog," could actually be a legit contender for my Game of the Year, but yeah. This was completely delightful in every way. The art, the dialogue and character interactions, the humor... everything just made me smile so much. Kudos to the social team and I really hope they keep bringing us more of this kinda stuff.