Sonic Rumble | DJcube

Release Date: 5th November 2025
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Platforms: PC, Mobile
Version Played: PC

After an incredibly long beta test period in Australia, Sonic Rumble finally got a worldwide release. The game is essentially Sega’s take on Fall Guys, where players compete in a knockout tournament to get the highest store, with half the players getting kicked out in the first two rounds, with the final one determining the winner.

The core movement, while not as speedy as you’d expect from a Sonic game, feels incredibly solid, and is a ton of fun. You have a homing attack, item button and two slots for special skills. The interface has a mobile layout and, while the game is out on mobile. I really can’t imagine playing this game using a touchscreen. Definitely play it with a controller. This is probably why I’ve always made it to the final round.

There are a good variety of game modes to play. There are simple races on new levels based on classic themes (it’s all Sonic can do lately). These tend to focus on different gimmicks and sometimes players will need to band together to take out obstacles. Some have lots of grinding, some have lots of enemies, some have trick platforms and so on. Plenty of variety, and a lot of fun.

Then there are social rounds. Different objects will try to take you out and out have two lives to last until enough people have been eliminated. The difficulty ramps up as time goes on and it gets very frantic. Another common game type for the second round is collecting or breaking specific objects, like large metal flowers or flags. Once again, there’s enough different formats for a lots of different experiences.

The final round is ways ring collection, which can be combined with other tasks like a long platforming level or escaping from lava. The rings collected from previous rounds also count, so the winner of the full thing is simply the winner of this round, with the best players getting a head start. It can get very stressful near the end as item boxes that let you attack other players (and steal some of their rings) can crop up near the end and your rank can fluctuate wildly.

So, the core gameplay is a lot of fun with a surprising amount of variety in each event. Which means it’s time to talk about the most abysmal part of the game: monetisation. At the games full launch, there were three different paid battle passes. These are forms of DLC where if you don’t grind the game long enough within the time of the pass, you lose the item you didn’t earn. You do get some items within the free version of this, but that’s purely to tease you by showing you what you can get if you paid an additional £20 or so.

There’s also a red ring shop, which is the games premium currency that you earn a tiny slither by playing the game. Skins, stickers and emotes can cost upwards of £75. You can use rings you earn from marches in a regular ring shop, although you can only earn so many rings in a day – so if you’re trying to work though the battle passes, you’ll be blocked from keeping a lot of your rings.

With that said, if you just want a selection of characters and don’t care about specific random designs, it doesn’t actually take long to build up a decent collection of Sonic characters. I unlocked Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge and a bunch of others surprisingly quickly and if you’re happy enough with that, then you won’t really care about all the other nonsense you can pay for.

One missed opportunity seems to be the avatar characters from Sonic Forces, as some random designs pad out the available skims (and you start off with one of them). There’s no customisation or creating your own one, which makes them quite pointless. There are stickers, emotes and some other effects to unlock, the dodgiest one is skills.

There are a lot of skills you can buy with a special currency. Some are designed for specific modes while others can only be equipped by a specific charter. These can be moves that help with movement or uses to attack opponents. If you have enough, you can even select specific skills to specific game modes. It’s a pay to win mechanic that can give players an unfair advantage.

Outside of the main mode, there are a few other ways to play. Occasionally, a boss mode will be available where you and 29 other players have to work together to fight a large boss, with some rather run mechanics like having to destroy items to block a devastating attack. Players can be eliminated and players that cause the most damage get the best rewards.

There’s also a singleplayer mode, which surprised me. It’s a pain to unlock fully, as you need to grind medal tokens form one specific raffle section of one of the free battle pass tiers (and you can only do a few a day). These let you buy levels, which you can then upgrade by completing challenges in the main mode, which relies on those levels being random selected.

On you have these open, you can play the events from the main mode on your own, trying to beat the set score. These can also be played in coop with free friends. It’s a nice addition, just a shame it’s not more open. Really, it highlights that Sonic Rumble would be a brilliant local multiplayer game. With split screen, it would probably be the best Sonic party game. Instead, you just have to not get sucked in to spending any money on insane microtransactions.