"Is this gonna be a Sonic game?": Even Takashi Iizuka wasn't sure about Sonic Pico Park at first, but Sega's learned a lot from its indie collaborators

2026 marks Sonic the Hedgehog's 35th anniversary, and at Summer Game Fest, I got the chance to play maybe the most unusual part of Sega's celebrations: Sonic Pico Park, a co-op puzzle platformer that once again puts Sega's iconic blue blur in the hands of beloved indie devs. It's a sign of an evolving game industry, and the developers bringing Sonic Pico Park to life know that Sonic's continued evolution is key to the character's long-term survival.

My hands-on time with Sonic Pico Park is equal parts delightful and frustrating – pretty much as you'd expect for an indie couch co-op game. Just like the rest of developer Tecopark's puzzle platformer series, you and your fellow players take control of an array of boxy little characters and cooperate to work your way through challenges custom-built to ruin relationships.

Co-op for devs and players alike

The difference here is that there are now Sonic-influenced twists to all the levels. You can spin dash through cracked walls, run through big loops, and bounce off of strategically placed springs. Naturally, these elements play into the puzzle design, too. You can collect rings which, in true Sonic fashion, will save you from a single hit – which means you need to strategically choose who takes each ring to survive the death traps that'll follow.

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In one instance, you need to build a wall that one player can spin dash their way up. In another, you'll need a Tails player to fly the whole group across a big gap. The joy is in the discovery, so I won't spoil too many specific puzzle solutions, but it's all great fun. Of course, you'll already know the basics if you've played any of the Pico Park games before, but Tecopark sought out this collaboration in part because it wants to bring in new fans.

Pico Park is already wildly popular on its own merits, having sold some 8 million units. Creator Shunsuke "Teco" Miyake wanted to expand even further, however, and in 2021 formed a company to help the property reach the next level. "We really wanted to start expanding on Pico Park as an IP," as producer Shintaro Shimazu tells me via translator. "It was really popular with casual gamers, but we wanted to reach out and get even hardcore gamers and other people excited."

Shimazu explains that "we really thought we need to start collabing with IP," and since Miyake once worked at Sega, it was an obvious first choice. "Sonic is a great IP to collab with. It's got tons of appeal. People love it worldwide. Let's go to Sega. I doubt they'll ever let us even do this, but let's at least pitch it to them and see what they have to say. Maybe we'll get a skin or something small. To all of our disbelief, Sega was like, 'Actually, this is a great idea. Let me introduce you to the Sonic team, and let's start talking about doing a Sonic and Pico Park collab game together.'"

For Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka, seeing the beloved hedgehog and pals take on such a different type of gameplay was something of a shock, but Sega's previous big indie collaboration gave him confidence that it would work out.

"When I first saw the concept and the whole idea, I was kind of like, 'Is this gonna be a Sonic game?'" Iizuka tells me. "Like, 'I don't know how this collab is going to work.' But our experience working with the Sonic Mania team – they were also an indie developer, and they also had these ideas and kind of core beliefs that they wanted to execute on creatively."

While an eight-player co-op game was "something we on the Sonic Team side had never made before," that type of gameplay "was something that the team at Pico Park was really passionate about making." Iizuka did have at least one big suggestion for Tecopark, however: all the Sonic characters should have unique abilities. "It totally breaks the core game design of Pico Park," Iizuka admits, "but the team at Pico Park were really skilled at understanding the request, and then building around it."

Sonic madness meets Sonic Mania

Sega has now let indie developers make their own Sonic game multiple times, and it's not alone. We've gotten games like Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, The Rogue Prince of Persia, Cadence of Hyrule, and even the upcoming Castlevania: Belmont's Curse thanks to established publishers being open to allowing other developers to use their IP, and the results have largely been excellent. What's made it possible for these sorts of collaborations to happen in the modern era?

"I can't really speak for the other companies and maybe what they're thinking, but you know, from a Sega perspective, we do realize that making our big titles, it takes a lot of time, a lot of money," Iizuka explains. "It's a huge investment of, you know, the staff and the resources that we have, and then once you've invested all that time and energy into something, you really need to sell a lot of units in order to survive in the industry."

Indie developers, meanwhile, "have an idea, and they'll very quickly create that idea – that game experience – and then they'll continue moving forward and making more stuff. That's one thing that larger companies really can learn from the indie development scene – just how quickly they can take an idea, capture that, and put that into a game experience. It's really stimulating working with those indie developers." Iizuka believes this is a lesson Hollywood is already learning, and that AAA game studios should follow suit.

Partnering with indie studios also gives companies like Sega a chance to work with the very people whose love of video games was sparked by their characters. "I grew up in a household where we had a Super Famicom, but I was asking for a Mega Drive," Shimazu says. "My brother wanted a PlayStation, and I wanted to play Virtua Fighter. So I've always been that Sega fan at heart."

Of course, Shimazu was a Sonic fan, too, and has watched the character grow from a platformer protagonist to a multimedia mascot just like many of us have. "It was this really cool, unique character that I got to play with, and I really appreciated and enjoyed that time with the games," he says. "But when we look historically at what Sonic has been and where Sonic is going – Sonic's in movies, Sonic's in lots of different media. All these different ways of presenting Sonic to lots of people, I think, has been one of those ways to help Sonic survive."

Sonic's survival wasn't always assured. A decade ago, Sega had the character on the chopping block. But Iizuka thanks the fans for keeping the series alive even now, 35 years later – not to mention making sure that Sega stays on the right path.

"I'm sure you guys remember the Sonic 1 movie trailer that went out there. The fans really said, 'We don't like this, and we want things changed.' The teams listened to that, and they changed the design of Sonic for the movie. We're always constantly listening to the fans when we're thinking about the next game we want to make. Because the fans are there and they have been supporting us so much, we want to take the time – for the past 35 years – and really listen to what they want and deliver something that they're going to enjoy."

Gotta go fast to our list of the best Sonic games of all time.