Sonic Pico Park is SGF's surprise co-op gem

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Something about collaborations with Sonic the Hedgehog seem to dial in the right balance between good-natured fun and the sensibilities of the franchise. At the last Summer Game Fest, I quite enjoyed my time with Sonic Racing Crossworlds and it turned out to be a damn good game . This year at SGF, I played Sonic Pico Park, and across all the bigger demos I saw – including RGG’s upcoming Stranger Than Heaven – this little co-op puzzle-platformer is the one I came away from with the biggest smile, eager to tell my peers about why they shouldn’t overlook it.

What’s Pico Park? And What’s Sonic Got to Do With It?

Part of it is the inherent charm of the Pico Park games that fosters a natural kind of cooperation and problem-solving between strangers. It creates a joyous bond through the low-stakes consequences, but clever gameplay mechanics to get through progressively tougher obstacles in the 2D side-scroller framework. And don’t let its minimalist 8-bit-inspired look fool you, because it’s not a walk in the park in later levels. Whether it’s timing your dashes together to pass falling platforms or stacking atop each other to reach high-up switches to open paths, there needs to be some sort of communication between players. Some of it can be said in person, and some of it is just visually apparent as your character moves and gestures in-game. The latter is important for the online experience where I don’t expect many players to have microphones, so I’m curious to see how this would hold up as the challenges ramp up. Whether it’s a byproduct or by design, teamwork is embedded into the experience without the pressure you may feel in other co-op multiplayer scenarios so far.

That’s kind of the core thesis behind Pico Park, but what does the Sonic license bring to the formula? Well, it’s not just a cute skin to put over character models — judging from the eight levels I played, Sonic Pico Park thoughtfully incorporates mechanics we’ve seen in Sonic games over the years. The spin-dash carries a distinct momentum that you have to wield to either work your way up quarter-pipes or across ledges, springs launch you violently around the screen, and rings let you take a hit without having to reset – which can be used strategically. Some characters have unique traits that add a wrinkle to the solutions. For example, Tails can fly and carry one teammate along with him, but can only really hover at the level you initiate his tailspin. There’s a lot of poking and prodding to eventually devise a solution and it can be a bit frustrating – that’s part of the process, though, and even when I get knocked around from the collision physics between teammates, the colorful characters and cute soundtrack take the heat off really quickly (for now, at least).

Judging from the eight levels I played, Sonic Pico Park thoughtfully incorporates mechanics we’ve seen in Sonic games over the years.

How does this work when you have variables like character abilities and overall number of people in a given session? While each level’s format stays the same, it will adjust based on how many players are in the session. Certain ledges won’t be as high and certain paths will be different to accommodate player count whether it’s just you and a friend or eight players chaotically bouncing across the screen. I played with three other strangers during my brief 20-minute session and we cleared all eight levels available in the demo, and I feel like we forged a bond – I may not see them again, we may not remember this moment if we cross paths at another event, but we laughed and worked together to clear the demo and that’s what matters!

Sonic Pico Park is a fairly simple premise, and it looks unassuming, but I expect it to grow increasingly complex, which we won’t know for sure until it comes out later this year (although there is no release date or window quite yet).

Chatting with the Pico Park and Sonic Devs

In the meantime, I talked with producer Shintaro Shimazu from Tecopark and head of Sonic Team Takashi Iizuka about how this partnership came together. Shimazu explained that the director Shunsuke Miyake, who used to work at Sega, tasked Shimazu with expanding Pico Park as a series. While it has popularity in Asian territories, it hadn’t really picked up in the Americas and EMEA region. “I didn’t think it was going to happen, but I hoped maybe we could collaborate with Sonic on something. I pitched it with a whole presentation to Sega and astoundingly, they said it sounded like a great idea,” Shimazu told me. On the Sonic side of things, Iizuka said, “I wasn’t sure if it was really going to work for Sonic, but we didn’t have a game that had four people playing together in this style. So, I thought it could be fun for Sonic fans to yell and scream and get together in the same room, and so I said we should just try this out.” Iizuka also mentioned working with independent developers in the past and lending the Sonic IP to great success, namely with Sonic Mania.

But Shimazu didn’t want to just drop in the Sonic aesthetic and call it there. He explained all the ideas to incorporate gameplay mechanics seen in the mainline Sonic games, however, “We needed to make a demo so they could understand what we were trying to do. We presented it as well, and they understood it, especially with the Sonic elements.” Yet, it’s still very much a Pico Park game at heart – as Shimazu puts it, “When somebody fails, they can explain what they're trying to do, and we can get people to have this fun conversation, even when they're messing up.” Once this was established, he began working more closely with Iizuka by bouncing ideas around and testing level concepts.

"I thought it could be fun for Sonic fans to yell and scream and get together in the same room."

“One creative request I had for the Pico Park team was for the Sonic characters to all have their unique abilities – Tails can fly, Knuckles can glide. That would change the core dynamic of what Pico Park is. But they understood the challenge and did a great job integrating that into the levels and puzzle design,” Iizuka said. He went on to say that there’s still open communication as the game continues to be worked on as well. Shimazu says he’ll send updated builds to Iizuka, and he’ll play it, review it, and give feedback with the goal of it being both a solid Pico Park game and solid Sonic game merged together.

Sonic has been finding its footing in spin-off games and Iizuka sees the franchise as having three core pillars internally – one being racing, another being the 2D platforming action, and the other being 3D action in a more modern sense. But he also sees the value in working with external developers to bring something fresh and mix things up for Sonic fans more broadly. As for where he’d like to take Sonic next after Pico Park, well, Iizuka wouldn’t give me a hint, saying, “We can’t talk about anything that’s not announced yet, but Sonic Pico Park will be out this year.”

Michael Higham is an editor at IGN who regularly contributes with reviews, previews, features, and news in written and video form. He's usually entrusted with covering long RPGs and tech products, but he's got range when it comes to games. You'll also catch him at events and hosting video content, including IGN's weekly podcast Unlocked .