The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog surpasses 1 million downloads

It’s currently the highest rated Sonic game on Steam

Once upon a time, April Fool’s Day was an internet-wide extravaganza. Everyone from mobile game developers to Google participated in the jokester’s holiday, to varied results. These days, the festivities still exist, but they’re tepid enough to confuse legitimate news with gags. That said, if there was one clear winner of April Fool’s Day 2023, it is absolutely Sonic the Hedgehog.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, the free promotional Sonic the Hedgehog game released for PC via Steam on April 1, has surprised one million downloads in less than a week. Katie Chrzanowski, the social media manager for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, shared this news on April 5. The success of the title is particularly meaningful to Chrzanowski, as she brought together the team that pitched and created it.

“it’s definitely not standard process for a Social team to develop and publish a game,” said Chrzanowski in an extended Twitter thread, “but everyone was so patient and helpful in guiding us through the process and I’m so thankful for them going out of their way to assist.”

Over 1,000,000 of you have grabbed The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and it's currently the #61 highest rated game on Steam of ALL TIME.

Absolutely unreal. Thank you all so, so much. 💙 pic.twitter.com/Cy2cIo2AHl

— Katie – MiniKitty (@KatieChrz) April 5, 2023

A new legend in the Sonic canon

Clearly, this unorthodox approach worked for the game in the end. Not only does The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog have a spectacular download count, it has been received enormously well. With an Overwhelmingly Positive review consensus, the game unironically is the #61^st highest rated game on Steam. While the novelty of Sonic’s murder clearly drew eyes on the title to begin with, the quality of the content itself clearly lived up to expectations.

“This game has no business being SO GOOD as an April Fool’s joke! Like what?!” Says one top-rated review on Steam. “Unironically a very fun game. Great music, well written plot and characterization.” Reads yet another top review.

It’s important to put this release into context, of course. A free game with an immediately eye-catching hook will naturally garner enormous goodwill from the community. Whether The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is legitimately, seriously the best Sonic the Hedgehog game is obviously debatable.

Still, seeing the success of this little game that could is undoubtedly heartwarming. The Sonic community is famously passionate for this franchise, to the point that one of the greatest Sonic games of all time is sometimes called a fangame. Chrzanowski’s team was clearly able to tap into that memetic energy that has kept the fandom alive for all these years and give something special back to the fans. Or maybe everyone was just ready to see Sonic the Hedgehog murdered.

Either way, congratulations to everyone responsible for giving the people what they always wanted.