The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Happy April Fools' day! It's time for various companies to come out and say, "Hey, check out this thing that you would like? We're not doing that." Or perhaps even: "We've heard about the premise of Hatoful Boyfriend once, so here's a funny ironic dating sim parody that no one's definitely done before."

... anyway, unrelated to all that.

The Sonic social media team revealed The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog.

It's a classic train-bound whodunnit. You play as an unassuming, well-meaning worker on the Mirage Express. You've been entrusted with the day's events, and need to make sure everything goes smoothly. Once things kick off, you find yourself pressing through the colorful cast of Sonic the Hedgehog characters present to get to the bottom of some mysterious goings-on.

When making your arguements, you're prompted to think, "What would Sonic do?"

But, of course, Sonic would run forward and collect rings until reaching the end of the path ahead. It's that simple! And that's exactly how you reach your conclusions after collecting enough evidence to counter whatever statement is thrown your way.

Wait, you ask. But where's the joke?

Joke?

Yeah, you continue. It's April Fools'. So there's a joke, right?

Wrong!

The only fool here is you! For being tricked into playing this entirely earnest and extremely precious murder mystery visual novel set in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe!!

This was such a delight though, please do give it a try. The gameplay is fairly simple, for the kids out there as well as the Sonic fans that may not necessarily be into hard-boiled mystery VNs. The story is light-hearted, but (and this is key) it's never insincere. There's very obviously a lot of affection for the series behind every step of this little game.

They easily could have leaned into the jokey bit, but in the end this is just a free game they released around April Fools!

And it's good!