As a long-time Sonic the Hedgehog fan, nothing excites me more than a new game announcement for the Blue Blur and pals – but I’ll cop to some hesitation that one of the scant few Sonic 35th Anniversary game reveals for Summer Game Fest 2026 is a spin-off of the Pico Park games. And it’s not out of any kind of disdain for the series of lo-fi multiplayer puzzlers, I think they’re neat, but these games strike a particular pace that seems immediately at odds with what we know about Sonic platformers.
But good news! I recently had the chance to play through a very brief preview demo of Sonic Pico Park at Summer Game Fest Play Days, and I think it may actually have the (chilli dog) sauce.
Without getting too into the weeds of what makes a Pico Park, these are co-operative 2D puzzle platformers that task up to eight players to navigate carefully through tricks, traps and tumbles. They require moving together as a unit, coordinating the group’s actions and timing, and flexing a bit of creative thinking to figure out how best to employ teamwork to progress each quickfire stage.
Sonic Pico Park follows pretty well the same formula, though it introduces ideas and wrinkles that should help it feel familiar to Sonic fans. In the very early stages I played, we took advantage of springs to shoot over walls, spin-dashed through loops and picked up classic items like Rings to give us a crucial hit point for making it through unavoidable hazards. Playing as Tails, with Sonic, Amy and Knuckles along for the ride, I also used my unique ability to fly to cross hazards to activate switches, and even airlift the rest of my crew over otherwise-impassable chasms.
It’s a clever one-two hit of familiarity for Sonic fans who might not yet know the language of Pico Park but are attuned to the intricacies of Sonic. And likewise for Pico Park fans this opens up all new avenues for level and puzzle design that’s fresh and different, which should be equally as exciting.
Crucially, that chaotic exercise of trying to wrangle your friends in the room to not only work in tandem, but execute solutions in a shared space, is still a great source of entertainment. Going back to the Rings, one puzzle had us all rush to collect a Ring each before a hazard dropped from the ceiling – if just one of us was sans protection at that point, we would have to start again. But the Rings are finite, and it’s entirely possible to accidentally pick up multiple, so it becomes necessary to Spin Dash into a teammate to nab one of their spares. This then creates its own problems as your gaggle of Sonic friends bounces around each other, swapping rings to and fro, all the while seconds away from failure. We had to do this bit a few times, I’m afraid to say.
We’re unmistakably dealing with a Pico Park game in terms of presentation here, the same low-detail environments in simple colours striking a low profile so as to not get in the way of readability. The Pico-ed Sonic characters are darling, though, rendered even more rudimentarily than any of their earliest iterations but still possessing a recognisable charm.
Sonic Pico Park may be the new Sonic the Hedgehog release a lot of us have been asking for, but it feels poised to be a delightful little experience regardless for fans of either or both properties. I’m excited to see if the other characters end up with the opportunity to contribute in the same way as Tails with his flying, and overall how much more Sonic-isms are waiting in later, trickier stages.
Sonic Pico Park launches later in 2026 for PC and TBD console platforms.