This review contains spoilers
Well, this was certainly an interesting experience. As someone that hardly ever plays visual novels, much less mystery focused ones, I was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying this game. In my opinion, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog just oozes charm. I love that it feels like it wasn't just made as an April Fools joke; If they really wanted to, they could have made this a completely nonsensical joke game and that still would have been really funny. Instead, they've gone and somehow made a genuinely amusing, witty, silly, and visually stunning game for free. It's very shocking that this was easily one of the most enjoyable Sonic games out there for me, although it is very much not all that replayable since its short and doesn't have any major narrative changes based on dialogue choices as far as I can tell.
I think the actual plot is relatively barebones, but it didn't really need to be anything all that special anyway. The premise is that you're an average fellow (I hear the main character's name is canonically Barry) who's been working as an attendant of a train for a long while now. Sonic and a whole cavalcade of friends - Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge, Vector, Espio, and Blaze - have planned a birthday party for Amy here in the form of a staged murder mystery event, where someone must be the "murderer". Everyone has their own character to play, having been assigned lore cards by Amy. As you can imagine, this makes for some very amusing moments with how some characters struggle to fit in the roles and others wear it like a belt. However, as it turns out, this event wasn't all entirely under control. You see hints that something's gone wrong early on, when the train makes a rough stop, causing Barry, Tails, and Amy to get trapped in the room they were hiding in. Once you go on to investigate, interrogate the others, and try to piece together the mystery throughout the rest of the game, you get some good old fashioned detective stuff which Tails naturally seems to be a master at. He's mainly the one solving things here, you just look around to find evidence that could be used for interrogations. This can be something as minor as the Locksmith's (that's the character Shadow is playing) keyring to something as obviously suspicious as an arcade machine with broken glass. I'm just gonna say it right here; I'm a total idiot when it comes to puzzle solving and even I knew Espio was the culprit by the end of the game. His alibi was the weakest of the group, as Tails notes, and there's a good amount of dialogue exchanges that just make it pretty obvious he's guilty. Nonetheless, after Espio is found out, the true manipulator that caused all the weird things is found out: the train itself. Yea, apparently the train is some kind of AI Badnik this whole time and somehow the conductor had no idea of this. The train was one of several built by Eggman in the nondescript city this game takes place in, although it seems to be the only one that has gone rogue. What I like about this is how it subverts the typical "Eggman was behind it all" type thing; there's been plenty of games before that do this sort of thing, but I thought it was neat how Eggman basically had no involvement in this at all and was more so just amusing himself with the Badnik capturing Sonic and the gang. Only thing is, I'm not convinced that Sonic's friends weren't powerful enough to destroy this train, but that's a minor gripe. Overall I think this was pretty neat, not anything groundbreaking but cool nonetheless. Something of note before I end this paragraph is that this game seems to have ties to Frontiers: Sage shows up for a second at the end and Sonic mentions reaching a high speed after filling up a ring counter in his previous adventure, for example. There's also a surprising amount of references to Sonic Unleashed, with Spagonia being mentioned a few times and Professor Pickle being namedropped by Tails once. The developers and SEGA themselves did joke around with this game by bringing up that old "Everything is canon" tweet, so I think they just used that as an excuse to reference some of the deeper cuts in Sonic's catalogue, but unlike Frontiers (sorry not sorry) I feel all the references here were great and made sense. It didn't just constantly reference things for the sake of referencing them.
The characters and writing are absolutely the best part about this game. The humor all hit pretty well with me; most of it wasn't quite laugh out loud funny for me but it was very charming overall. Might've just been my dialogue choices, but Barry is portrayed to be an absolute dweeb and I love them. A good amount of the humor actually comes from this character's interactions with others and it worked great because they're so socially awkward yet still bounce off the other characters well. The gag with Barry constantly trying to search the trash cans - claiming "There's always something in the trash!" - only to find nothing there each time except for once was pretty amusing to me. That bit with Rouge, Blaze, Tails, and Barry coming up with a goofy plan to steal the Chao Faberge Egg, only to get it and hear it start ticking like a bomb was probably the most funny moment to me. They give you a ton of downright stupid solutions to stop the bomb, which I got some laughs out of picking. Of course, it turns out it wasn't actually a bomb and was instead opening up to reveal Chao themed jewelry. Overall, the game just seems to have a lot of personality that I loved seeing. I think its great to see a Sonic game that focuses more on some low-stakes (at first) joviality with the characters themselves and they all really get to shine here. Shadow in particular has probably the best characterization in The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog; the fact that I can say this is the best he's been since Sonic Adventure 2 without it even being a joke is just mind-blowing. It also singlehandedly made me actually care about Espio; I feel like, for most of his appearances, he's just been a boring stoic guy who's only personality is "I'm a ninja", but he has so much personality here that it really caught me off-guard. There are a few characters I love that I wish we could've seen, like Silver, Cream, or even Big, but I can see why they wouldn't want to bloat the already large cast of returning characters here and I was genuinely surprised to see some of the choices here. Blaze and Espio were not characters I was expecting to see become part of the main narrative in a Sonic game again, that's for sure. Also, it's a bit odd to bring this up here, but I really loved the bit with Metal Sonic and Sage wearing "#1 Dad" shirts. It was oddly heartwarming and its nice to see SEGA officially acknowledge the love people have for this fan concept of the "Egg Family".
So, gameplay. When I was first playing this game, I didn't think I would even have a section on this. I mean, its a visual novel with very light point-and-click game elements, what would there be to talk about? The big thing this game does, though, is shove in random 2D auto-runner sections. Press spacebar to jump, use the arrow keys or WASD to move Sonic around. The goal is to collect a certain amount of rings. Whenever you're interrogating someone and the player needs to think, you get one of these segments. They're alright, I guess, but they felt pretty unnecessary to me. I don't see why The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog couldn't have just been purely visual novel + point-and-click, as tempted as I am to make a joke about SEGA shoving in 2D segments in Sonic games when it would've been better without. I have to say that something about the way they look and move was genuinely nauseating to play for a while. Not to the point where it would literally make me feel negative effects, but it gave me a feeling of discomfort that made me wonder if this is anywhere near how it feels to be motion sick, especially after constantly failing that boss level against the train (which happens to be insanely bright with a fast moving background and tons of obstacles to dodge). If anything, I'm taking a point or so off for these segments; they were mid at best and uncomfortable at worst.
Going to dedicate a small paragraph here praising the art style. This is a very pretty game, plain and simple. I adore how much the art pops out of the screen with how colorful it is, it's so cozy and nice. It has a sort of crosshatching (I don't remember if its actually called that) that almost reminds me of vintage comic books, which adds an extra bit of visual flair. The character portraits themselves are also very expressive and were an absolute treat to see. Amy getting comically angry, Tails blushing all the time, Espio getting way too into his role of being a poet...its just all so NICE! I loved it.
Overall, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is a very pleasant surprise of a Sonic game with tons of charm and character. I enjoyed it a lot, but the nature of the game unfortunately makes it to where I really don't think its worth revisiting at all, and that's a shame considering how short it is. It's one of those games that feels like it shouldn't exist, making it a perfect fit for the April Fools game its meant to be, yet the developers made something really enjoyable out of it that still makes sense. Gets a solid 3.5 stars out of me, its got issues that tear it down a little but it was still such a pleasant surprise.
I think the actual plot is relatively barebones, but it didn't really need to be anything all that special anyway. The premise is that you're an average fellow (I hear the main character's name is canonically Barry) who's been working as an attendant of a train for a long while now. Sonic and a whole cavalcade of friends - Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge, Vector, Espio, and Blaze - have planned a birthday party for Amy here in the form of a staged murder mystery event, where someone must be the "murderer". Everyone has their own character to play, having been assigned lore cards by Amy. As you can imagine, this makes for some very amusing moments with how some characters struggle to fit in the roles and others wear it like a belt. However, as it turns out, this event wasn't all entirely under control. You see hints that something's gone wrong early on, when the train makes a rough stop, causing Barry, Tails, and Amy to get trapped in the room they were hiding in. Once you go on to investigate, interrogate the others, and try to piece together the mystery throughout the rest of the game, you get some good old fashioned detective stuff which Tails naturally seems to be a master at. He's mainly the one solving things here, you just look around to find evidence that could be used for interrogations. This can be something as minor as the Locksmith's (that's the character Shadow is playing) keyring to something as obviously suspicious as an arcade machine with broken glass. I'm just gonna say it right here; I'm a total idiot when it comes to puzzle solving and even I knew Espio was the culprit by the end of the game. His alibi was the weakest of the group, as Tails notes, and there's a good amount of dialogue exchanges that just make it pretty obvious he's guilty. Nonetheless, after Espio is found out, the true manipulator that caused all the weird things is found out: the train itself. Yea, apparently the train is some kind of AI Badnik this whole time and somehow the conductor had no idea of this. The train was one of several built by Eggman in the nondescript city this game takes place in, although it seems to be the only one that has gone rogue. What I like about this is how it subverts the typical "Eggman was behind it all" type thing; there's been plenty of games before that do this sort of thing, but I thought it was neat how Eggman basically had no involvement in this at all and was more so just amusing himself with the Badnik capturing Sonic and the gang. Only thing is, I'm not convinced that Sonic's friends weren't powerful enough to destroy this train, but that's a minor gripe. Overall I think this was pretty neat, not anything groundbreaking but cool nonetheless. Something of note before I end this paragraph is that this game seems to have ties to Frontiers: Sage shows up for a second at the end and Sonic mentions reaching a high speed after filling up a ring counter in his previous adventure, for example. There's also a surprising amount of references to Sonic Unleashed, with Spagonia being mentioned a few times and Professor Pickle being namedropped by Tails once. The developers and SEGA themselves did joke around with this game by bringing up that old "Everything is canon" tweet, so I think they just used that as an excuse to reference some of the deeper cuts in Sonic's catalogue, but unlike Frontiers (sorry not sorry) I feel all the references here were great and made sense. It didn't just constantly reference things for the sake of referencing them.
The characters and writing are absolutely the best part about this game. The humor all hit pretty well with me; most of it wasn't quite laugh out loud funny for me but it was very charming overall. Might've just been my dialogue choices, but Barry is portrayed to be an absolute dweeb and I love them. A good amount of the humor actually comes from this character's interactions with others and it worked great because they're so socially awkward yet still bounce off the other characters well. The gag with Barry constantly trying to search the trash cans - claiming "There's always something in the trash!" - only to find nothing there each time except for once was pretty amusing to me. That bit with Rouge, Blaze, Tails, and Barry coming up with a goofy plan to steal the Chao Faberge Egg, only to get it and hear it start ticking like a bomb was probably the most funny moment to me. They give you a ton of downright stupid solutions to stop the bomb, which I got some laughs out of picking. Of course, it turns out it wasn't actually a bomb and was instead opening up to reveal Chao themed jewelry. Overall, the game just seems to have a lot of personality that I loved seeing. I think its great to see a Sonic game that focuses more on some low-stakes (at first) joviality with the characters themselves and they all really get to shine here. Shadow in particular has probably the best characterization in The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog; the fact that I can say this is the best he's been since Sonic Adventure 2 without it even being a joke is just mind-blowing. It also singlehandedly made me actually care about Espio; I feel like, for most of his appearances, he's just been a boring stoic guy who's only personality is "I'm a ninja", but he has so much personality here that it really caught me off-guard. There are a few characters I love that I wish we could've seen, like Silver, Cream, or even Big, but I can see why they wouldn't want to bloat the already large cast of returning characters here and I was genuinely surprised to see some of the choices here. Blaze and Espio were not characters I was expecting to see become part of the main narrative in a Sonic game again, that's for sure. Also, it's a bit odd to bring this up here, but I really loved the bit with Metal Sonic and Sage wearing "#1 Dad" shirts. It was oddly heartwarming and its nice to see SEGA officially acknowledge the love people have for this fan concept of the "Egg Family".
So, gameplay. When I was first playing this game, I didn't think I would even have a section on this. I mean, its a visual novel with very light point-and-click game elements, what would there be to talk about? The big thing this game does, though, is shove in random 2D auto-runner sections. Press spacebar to jump, use the arrow keys or WASD to move Sonic around. The goal is to collect a certain amount of rings. Whenever you're interrogating someone and the player needs to think, you get one of these segments. They're alright, I guess, but they felt pretty unnecessary to me. I don't see why The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog couldn't have just been purely visual novel + point-and-click, as tempted as I am to make a joke about SEGA shoving in 2D segments in Sonic games when it would've been better without. I have to say that something about the way they look and move was genuinely nauseating to play for a while. Not to the point where it would literally make me feel negative effects, but it gave me a feeling of discomfort that made me wonder if this is anywhere near how it feels to be motion sick, especially after constantly failing that boss level against the train (which happens to be insanely bright with a fast moving background and tons of obstacles to dodge). If anything, I'm taking a point or so off for these segments; they were mid at best and uncomfortable at worst.
Going to dedicate a small paragraph here praising the art style. This is a very pretty game, plain and simple. I adore how much the art pops out of the screen with how colorful it is, it's so cozy and nice. It has a sort of crosshatching (I don't remember if its actually called that) that almost reminds me of vintage comic books, which adds an extra bit of visual flair. The character portraits themselves are also very expressive and were an absolute treat to see. Amy getting comically angry, Tails blushing all the time, Espio getting way too into his role of being a poet...its just all so NICE! I loved it.
Overall, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is a very pleasant surprise of a Sonic game with tons of charm and character. I enjoyed it a lot, but the nature of the game unfortunately makes it to where I really don't think its worth revisiting at all, and that's a shame considering how short it is. It's one of those games that feels like it shouldn't exist, making it a perfect fit for the April Fools game its meant to be, yet the developers made something really enjoyable out of it that still makes sense. Gets a solid 3.5 stars out of me, its got issues that tear it down a little but it was still such a pleasant surprise.