If I were ever asked, I'd probably say that a "visual novel point-and-click mystery" would be the least likely genre that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise would explore, and that's exactly the game SEGA released for 2023's April Fools. I haven't played a lot of visual novels, but as a fan of the franchise I've always wanted to see the characters interact in more scenarios, and the unique premise piqued my interest.

The story of The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog begins with a new face to the Sonic scene, a quokka (yes, that is an actual animal) who was just hired as an attendant on a luxury event train known as the "Mirage Express". This quokka serves as the player character and you get to type out a name for him (with some exceptions, such as swear words or names of other characters). The name you choose will be used by the other characters to refer to the player character throughout the story.

The Mirage Express is hosting a birthday party for Amy Rose with several other Sonic characters also invited. The main event of this party is a "murder mystery" game where one of the characters is a "murderer" and the other characters have to find out who it is. Everything goes according to plan until something strange occurs. The player character teams up with Tails to solve the "murder mystery" game, but also to get to the bottom of another underlying mystery.

As expected for its genre, the gameplay for The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is fairly simple. Each area you explore is presented as a static scene with characters and various objects of interest within it. Characters and interactable objects are highlighted with a green aura when you hover over them with your mouse. Clicking a character will bring up the option to talk with them or confront them with evidence, while clicking objects will bring up character dialogue and give you a piece of evidence depending on the object. Once you gather all the evidence in a given area, you confront the character(s) in that area and use the collected evidence to poke holes in their testimonies. If you've played games like the Ace Attorney series, this will be quite familiar to you, but what The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog does differently is that you play a minigame called "THINK" every time you present evidence. This minigame is an isometric pixel-art styled "endless runner" where you have to collect a certain amount of rings before reaching the end of the level while dodging hazards and bottomless pits.

The "THINK" minigames are a highlight for me as they have a strong visual, audio, and gameplay resemblance to the "Special Stage" minigames seen in several mainline Sonic games. While they start off pretty easy, they increase in difficulty the further you go in the story, resulting in some surprisingly high-speed action by the end of it. However, if the high-speed platforming action isn't quite your thing, the difficulty for these "THINK" segments can be adjusted in the options. The options are fairly robust, allowing you to change the speed, the number of collectables needed to proceed, and as well as being able to render yourself invincible and remove bottomless pits.

When it comes to difficulty, I find that the "THINK" minigames provide more challenge than the mystery and interrogations. In most cases the correct evidence is fairly straightforward to deduce, and you're able to try again after picking the wrong evidence with no penalty. Similarly, the only penalty for failing a "THINK" minigame is having to try again, but they can still be quite the challenge if you don't lower the difficulty.

In terms of story, the main draw of The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is that it's a comical "who-dun-it" mystery featuring the very colorful cast of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. You have a detective, a ninja, a princess from a dimension, a teenage supersonic hero, a fangirl with an oversized hammer, an 8 year-old mechanic, a stoic guardian of an ultimate power source, a thief who doubles as a government spy, and a genetically-engineered ultimate lifeform all on the same train participating in a murder mystery game. Oh, and the player character is there too.

Speaking of the player character, he has a surprising amount of personality. He actively speaks to the other characters and has his own distinct traits that shine through. You get to pick his dialogue from a set of options at various points, but his overall personality remains consistent throughout the story. One of his key traits is that he's a "normal person" in comparison to the main cast, which often creates an amusing contrast in his interactions with them.

The character interactions and the resulting humor and whimsy are definitely the bread-and-butter of the story, but it's worth noting that I'm already familiar with these characters. While it's possible that someone less familiar with the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise may still enjoy it, it may not be in the same way or to the same extent. As for the plot itself, it's intriguing enough to maintain interest, but it's not a particularly deep mystery. There are also a few plotholes that can potentially be distracting, though most of them don't directly affect the mystery itself.

While the character writing is fun, I think it was a bit shallow in some places. Sometimes the characters feel more like caricatures of themselves. However, I figure this as being mostly the result of the overall humorous direction of the story. It's more focused on goofy hijinks and fun, and overall I find the character writing to be amusing rather than annoying.

The overall presentation is excellent. The art is charming with a lot of appeal, the backgrounds are detailed, and the characters are expressive. While most of the music isn't quite as catchy as the rest of the franchise, it's still very good and I'd say that it lives up to the standard the franchise is known for. It does a great job of setting the mood and is fairly jamming throughout. The area themes are fairly reminiscent of tracks you may hear in a classic Sonic level but generally more laid back, which is a perfect fit for a visual novel as you're taking your time rather than speeding through levels. I'm especially fond of the tracks for the "THINK" minigame (it mostly uses one track, but during the climax it switches it up with two additional tracks).

The controls are very simple. You use the mouse to click objects and go through dialogue, while the "THINK" minigames use the spacebar to jump and either the arrow keys or the WASD keys to move. As for stability, I played the entire story on Ubuntu Linux through Proton and I didn't encounter any glitches. The options allow you to tweak audio levels, resolution and full screen, which is about what I'd expect for a visual novel. The game also allows for up to three save files and it allows you to save and load from seemingly any point. This can be handy if you aren't sure you want to commit to a certain dialogue option.

The game is very short and can be completed in an afternoon, but I don't think this is an issue since it's free and is meant to be more of a fun diversion than a full-fledged game. With that in mind, it never feels like it's too short. However, it doesn't have much in terms of replayability. It's fairly linear in its progression and outcome with little variance outside of some dialogue options. Even though I missed a few interactions, I had already experienced almost everything the first time around and didn't feel compelled to play through again to catch what I missed.

The only other flaw I can think of is that normally the "THINK" minigames only take up part of the game's screen, but the final "THINK" minigame segments take up the entire screen. This made it fairly disorientating to play when playing in fullscreen, though I was still able to complete them. This could potentially be mitigated by changing to windowed mode and reducing the size of the game's window, but ideally this shouldn't be necessary just to play a certain segment of the game comfortably.

As for moral content, this game is fairly clean, though with some caveats. The subject is a "murder mystery game" party, so the topic of murder is mentioned frequently. Violence is also implied or vaguely described, but generally not shown. A character gets "beat up" and the characters mention the injuries as if they're visually apparent, but the actual character art doesn't reflect it very much. Some characters may also threaten violence against other characters, but overall violence against living creatures is barely shown. However, there is a fair amount of visible violence against machinery and inanimate objects. The "THINK" segments also have obstacles like spikes, pits and energy blasts that need to be avoided, but these don't do much aside from knocking the character back or causing him to fall off the screen.

One of the characters has a somewhat revealing outfit, wearing a sports bra that shows top cleavage and midriff.

During one part of the game, you have to assist another character in planning and pulling off a heist in order to proceed, and the plan you come up with may involve deceit depending on your decisions.

Though the player character's design is more in-line with male Sonic characters, the game will refer to the player character with gender-neutral pronouns. This may have been done with the intent of making the character more universal as a player stand-in, but his distinct personality makes him come off more as an actual character than a player avatar. Overall this makes the decision to use gender-neutral pronouns a bit confusing. However, this only occurs a few times as the player character is referred to by name for most of the dialogue.

A potential issue with the game attempting to portray the character as gender-neutral is a specific dialogue option where, during the heist-planning, you can suggest that the player character poses as a female character's spouse as a cover story. This dialogue option is played for laughs and doesn't actually go anywhere, but it could be problematic if the player character is seen as female or possibly being female.

Gender-neutral language is also used for characters known as "Chao" and a robot named Omochao (characters that don't have a gender in-universe but were usually referred to with gendered language in the past). This only comes up a few times so this may not be an issue, but there is a dialogue option that states "Ask the Chao about their partner and kids".

Overall The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is a pretty fun time, especially for someone who's a fan of the Sonic franchise. The "THINK" minigame is more fun and challenging than I expected, and I like the expressiveness of the character art and the overall appeal of the art style. While I may not be completely satisfied with the writing, the character interactions are a lot of fun and the overall whimsical direction of the writing makes it so I'm never taking things more seriously than I ought to even as a diehard Sonic fan. Despite the theme of murder there is little actual violence present. I find the game's use of gender-neutral language to be potentially concerning, though it only occurs in a handful of instances. The game is both free and only takes a few hours to complete, so if it happens to pique your interest and the possible moral concerns don't bother you, I'd say it's worth your time.