Sonic Dream Team

Release Date: 5th December 2023
Developer: Hardlight
Publisher: Sega
Platforms: Apple Arcade

Sonic Dream Team is a mobile Sonic game released exclusively under the Apple Arcade service in 2023. It’s made by Hardlight Studios, who started out with the really good Sonic Jump remake but then mainly made terrible mobile Sonic games (mainly the Sonic Dash series). So I didn’t really have much hope for this one – but I got hold of an old iPhone and used the Apple Arcade trial to play through it.

To my surprise, it doesn’t play like a mobile game. In fact, the game feels pretty horrible on the touchscreen, requiring two analogue sticks for movement and camera. You really need to play the game with a controller connected to your phone. The movement is, astonishingly, amazing. This is possibly the best that Sonic has felt moving in 3D, with Sonic being easy to turn, even while boosting. It felt like I was in full control the entire time, and the game is entirely in 3D, not needing any 2D sections to funnel the player.

The story is basic (which I think works best for Sonic): Dr. Robotnik uses Cream to access the dream world to try and take over and make his dreams a reality, but Sonic and Co manage to interrupt it, with the game taking place in the dream world. This means that each of the four zones are made up of lots of floating platforms, but the style is rather nice and it looks pretty great. I do wish that I wasn’t playing on my phone, as there’s some nice views, but the camera is quite zoomed out and Sonic is extremely small.

You also don’t just play as Sonic. There are three types of characters. Speed (Sonic and Amy), Flying (Tails and Cream) and Power (Knuckles and Rouge). Each level will have paths that only one type can reach, as Speed characters can use Light Speed Dash to travel along paths of rings, Flying characters can reach high up areas (and use special rings to recharge their flight) while Power characters can climb certain surfaces. Outside of these abilities, they all run and control the same, which is great as it means you can play your preferred way.

After you play a main level, you’ll open up a bunch of extra challenge levels that take place in altered versions of the levels. Some can limit character type, while others will let you change character at any point. These are challenges like a time trial, checkpoint races and searching for crystals, although these are all pointed out to you, you just have to work out how to get there. You’ll collect Dream Orbs from completing levels and challenges, which are needed to unlock more levels (with later levels requiring more Dream Orbs). As the gameplay is fun, I don’t mind this at all.

Now, the game isn’t free from mobile nonsense. There are three different unlock paths where you have to spend experience, some of which lock away certain features. Even if you finish the game and you stick mainly to one path, you’ll be nowhere near the end of any of them. You can replay levels for a higher score, or there’s a separate challenge mode you can unlock that gives you three extra challenge missions each day, which take place on unique (although generic looking) levels and can have more unique objectives, like trying to touch the ground as little as possible.

Unlocking these challenges also unlocks an additional small campaign where Shadow joins in. He’s the most unique character in the game, using his Chaos powers. He can temporarily stop time or, when in the air, warp forward to pass past fast-moving objects or reach more distant areas. Using the Chaos Control to stop time can be a pain (you have to press X while standing completely still, any movement and you’ll boost, usually right off the edge). Annoyingly, you have to unlock each new mission in the XP system and it requires a lot. Eventually, you can unlock Shadow for the main campaign.

There’s also another campaign on top of this – one with much more challenging levels than the fun but easy ones in the main story. You’ll need a certain amount of Moon Orbs from this campaign plus Dream Orbs from the main campaign to progress. If I wasn’t on a timer (due to the subscription), I’d definitely work through this, but I have no interest in continuing a subscription due to this.

Sonic Dream Team is a really good Sonic game, which would have probably been panned on consoles due to not being “epic” or having “scope”. I do hope that some day, it will get a release outside of the Apple ecosystem and I hope it won’t just be erased some day, because there really is a lot to like here, and Dream Team deserves so much more than to be hidden away on a subscription only available on one brand of phone.