There are a few of qualities that I immediately gravitate toward: self-awareness, sense of humor and appreciation for decade-centric nostalgia. So when I heard aboutSEGA’s totally free game,The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog, all three of the aforementioned boxes were checked with a permanent Sharpie.
The trailer on Steam spelled it all out with SEGA’s own words superimposed over Sonic The Hedgehog gameplay.WE’VE HEARD YOUR FEEDBACK, it said.YES…ALL OF IT. First off, has Team Soniceverbroken the fourth wall and addressed us fans before? And with a cheeky ellipsis, no less! The trailer’s buildup ultimately led to a declaration of a new direction for the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise, then hard cut to an image of the blue devil’s lifeless corpse dressed in sea captain’s regalia. To be honest, I shut the trailer down there and downloaded the game post-haste. Like anyone needed more impetus.
As one who was present at the blue hedgehog’s birth in 1991, SEGA has always played an integral role in my childhood (I had a Sonic doll, for gods' sakes), as well a predominate chunk of my young adult life. However, a dark part of my psyche let out a giddy squeal as I considered the question: Did Team Sonic just kill off their golden goose on April Fool’s Day?
Suffice to say, The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog is full of surprises, the most glaring being…there is no real murder! DUNH DUNH DUUUUUNH! The plot thickens. Essentially, TMOSTH is a casual game that ropes in virtually the entire Sonic gang under the premise of a murder-mystery birthday party for Amy aboard a high-speed train. Although it’s the most recent Sonic “game” to date, there is no advanced CGI or breakneck pacing. In fact, the artwork takes on an almost artisan-like quality, as the charming, comic-book-style graphics are textured like images drawn over a piece of corkboard. There are bursts of random humor to keep things light, as well as friendly banter between the familiar faces, but it was the deviation from Sonic’s typical platform genre that immediately made me smile. SEGA actually found a way to put Sonic in a point-and-click game.
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Point-and-click games were all the rage in the early ’90s, with classics like Myst andGrim Fandangoavailable exclusively on PC, but thanks to recent hits likeNight In The Woods, Unpacking, andLife Is Strange, point-and-clicks are making a comeback on a variety of consoles, as well as PC. As Steam offers titles from the greenest of devs to the most conspicuous names in the business, perhaps SEGA decided to test its latest creation in a neutral playground and under a somewhat lower profile. If the game turned out to be a dud, it would have been easier to bury it amidst Steam’s labyrinthine chambers of titles. That clearly wasn’t the case at all.
You play as the train conductor’s slightly awkward and unsure assistant — a completely new furry character to the Mobius universe that you can customize with your own name. Not a problem for me. I’d been speeding through SEGA games as Sonic since I was kid, so it was nice to participate as an outsider with zero pressure for a change. The gist is simple: assist Detective Tails — in his Sherlock Holmes tartan cape — and pushy journalist Amy in questioning the passengers in order to poke holes in their alibis about who “murdered” Sonic. Sounds easy enough, no? Ah, but that’s where you’re mistaken, my dear Watson.
After you’ve clicked and stored all the evidence in the train’s compartments, you’re then allowed to interrogate each member of the Sonic Team, but to properly use evidence during questioning, you’ve got to construct an “argument”. Here’s where Murder gives fans a nice, fat wink and some good ol’ Sonic gameplay. Every single time you want to present a damning theory, a rosy Dream Gear (a nod to Game Gear…remember those?) rises up, featuring our blue buddy alive, well, and running on a nostalgic marble track. It was like the bonus levels from Sonic The Hedgehog 2, except with debilitating obstacles popping up with increasing difficulty. Only by collecting the appropriate number of rings at the end of course can you question all the passengers and eventually discover the culprit at the front of the train. And I do meanonly.
Murderisn’t very complicated, but it sure is stubborn. You simply cannot proceed and go about your detective duties without getting through these Evidence Courses first. I must have played these obligatory levels over and over, but seeing as how I didn’t have a cool, sleek Steam deck, I had to rely on the severely warped keys and sticky spacebar on the MacBook I’m currently using. After that, I forever swore off eating spaghetti while trying to type.
There’s only one direction to go inMurder,and that’s forward. No time to mess around when there’s a crime afoot. This isn’t a huge complaint or anything, but with all the obvious love and care put into the train’s feel-good interior, it would’ve been a treat to explore a bit more off the beaten track. Guess we’ll just have to wait until the next time SEGA decides to drop another one of these surprisingly satisfying Chaos Emeralds on us. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion we’ll witness another incident somewhere around February 2nd. You know, for Groundhog’s Day? C’mon, it’s close enough to a hedgehog.
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