Alongside Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, Sonic Rumble is another 2025 release featuring the blue hedgehog stepping into the world of more multiplayer-focused genres. The main modes of the game are battle-royale-esque elimination contests and minigames. As a free to play game, I thought I’d give it a try to see if this title is worth your time.
Let’s Get Ready to Rumble
By far the most obvious comparison this game is inevitably going to draw is that of Fall Guys, a 2020 title that exploded in popularity thanks to the fantastic blend of the battle royale elimination game format with quirky obstacle course game show contests like Takeshi’s Castle. Sonic is no stranger to borrowing ideas from other franchises and trying to adapt them in his own style and image, but the dynamics are a bit different when we’re comparing free to play games because there really isn’t much stopping you from downloading either game and playing it right away. As such, analyzing Sonic Rumble is a lot of seeing what it does not just well or poorly, but better or worse than its competitors.
The main mode you’re most likely going to spend most of your time on is Ring Survival. Here you queue with up to 31 other players connected online and proceed through three elimination contests to try to reach the top spot. The first two stages are designed to cut the player pool from 32 to 16 to 8 before a final minigame crowns a top player. The first stage is usually a footrace wherein you try to reach the goal as quickly as possible. The second is often a survival mission where the goal is to stop yourself from being eliminated, though there are also occasional point-collecting and even team games here. The last one, called Ring Battle, is where you try to stake your claim to the crown; the games are a bit more varied, with some being more race-oriented while others are more arena action-oriented.
Sticking to a three game format works relatively well. Although there is a share of waiting while it loads, rounds themselves finish up rather quickly. Most of the levels are themed around iconic Sonic zones like City Escape or Sky Sanctuary (albeit unfortunately with an often more generic visual theme than the levels they’re based around), and accompanied by upbeat and bombastic musical arrangements of their respective familiar themes. In races, you generally push forward, try to get to boost pads, and homing attack enemies and objects while progressing to the end goal. I like that there are some 2D and 3D levels to at least feel just a bit more like modern Sonic and add some variety, although the game recommends a controller while not having an option to use my D-Pad for the 2D parts. The survival levels tend to be the most similar to those you’ll find in Fall Guys, as it’s often just dodging enemies trying to knock you out of the area or running away from a threatening foe or rising tide. Thankfully you have to be knocked out twice to be eliminated, which means bad luck and cheap shots aren’t a total death sentence.
There isn’t a whole lot of gameplay variety in the stages at this time, and certainly less than its jelly bean shaped primary competitor even had at launch, but I got a fair amount of enjoyment out of them. Some stages are better than others (e.g. I don’t really like the Shadow Hunt contest that came with the launch’s crossover event with the Sonic 3 movie), but rarely was there one that I outright said “I hate this”. Likely because the game needs to process what 32 players are doing at once, the game doesn’t have quite the same sense of speed as Sonic generally has in his main series games. There are at least power-ups you can obtain, such as speed shoes and a homing attack that connects with other players, but there isn’t as much ability to interact directly with other players as there is in a game like Fall Guys where you can just grab people at a whim.
The biggest issue I have with Ring Survival is that the end goal of the game is to have the most total rings of the final eight players. In the first two stages, there’s always rings scattered around which you can collect and add to your final total, giving you a bit of a side objective in each contest while pushing for the main goal. However, you get a substantially bigger bonus for finishing in first place in racing contests, and that bonus can be nigh insurmountable come time for the final game if you were a 15th or 16th place qualifier in the initial race. It’s not just a skill issue either, because many race games will have random elements like platforms and doors you have to guess correctly to progress, meaning the person who gets first place is not always the best performer. The idea of collecting rings and having your success in the first two games give you an edge in the final game isn’t truly awful in intention, but at present it needs more tuning to not feel overpowering.
What Else Can I Do?
Alongside Ring Survival is the Quick Rumble contest, in which you can play a single eight-player minigame for all the marbles. Alas, you’re limited to three contests a day. There’s stage challenges, which are effectively single player runthroughs of each stage you can encounter in Ring Survival, set with a timer. The platforming mechanics of Sonic Rumble, while more straightforward and robust than the intentionally weighty and mildly clumsy ones of Fall Guys, don’t really compare to those of a traditional Sonic platformer, so these don’t really do a lot for me beyond the rewards they offer. You can also make custom lobbies to play with friends if you like, with plenty of options for choosing stages.
The other two modes are Co-op Battle and Squad mode. Co-op battle is effectively a big co-op raid against a boss fight. I found it fun as a one off, but given it feels like I have little impact on the outcome as one member of a large team and there’s not much of a contest between players; it’s all or nothing and I didn’t really find it fun enough to come back to. Squad mode was by far my favorite addition to Fall Guys in the era after its initial launch, so it’s the one I most wanted to experience in Sonic Rumble. I played a few games of it and it’s a welcome lateral option to Ring Survival. Unfortunately, both of Co-Op Battle and Squad mode seem to only be available a few hours per day at specific times, meaning you’re not able to queue up for them very often and can miss the window, which is incredibly disappointing.
Price of Admission
Sonic Rumble lets you play as a variety of Sonic characters which you can unlock by either playing the game and getting currency or by chucking a few quid into the store. Early unlocks just take a modest bit of playing to obtain, so that part isn’t too bad. There’s also plenty of cosmetics such as alt-costumes and buddies who orbit around you (with many versions of the iconic and lovable Chao available among others).
There are a couple issues I take with the game’s monetization. Some things in the store are pretty darn pricey, with many individual skins being around 45$ USD if you just buy the resource you need to buy them outright, and trying to accrue those resources through gameplay alone takes a considerable amount of time. There’s a cap on how many rings you can get in a day from Ring Survival, which bottlenecks your ability to progress without meticulously logging in each day. The store menus are also an absolute mess to try and navigate, so even if I did put money in it’s more of a hassle to actually buy what I want than it probably should be. The game also puts an ad in your face for its sales after seemingly every 1-2 Ring Survival rounds, which can be a bit pervasive.
While the game fits Sonic aesthetically, it doesn’t quite have the personality to the series I feel. There’s a lot of characters to unlock, and they match some aspects (e.g. Shadow does his whole skating animation rather than running like most others), but there’s nothing like voiced lines or traits that give the characters the same personality they generally have in the series proper. One feature you do have access to is skills, which are individual movement abilities that you can activate in stages such as a mid-air forward dash, albeit with a usually long cooldown. These make the game have a bit of customization in their gameplay mechanics, as it makes each player have an asymmetrical toolkit, and there are even character-specific skills you can unlock. While I don’t dislike the idea in theory, the resource you exchange for skills is in the shop and otherwise takes quite a bit of work to accrue through playing the game a bunch, which can make the game feel sorta “pay-to-win” to obtain these little advantages.
Verdict
As a free to play game, Sonic Rumble is fine. It provides a Fall Guys-esque battle royale platforming experience with just enough Sonic flavor to distinguish itself adequately as its own thing, though not enough to quite capture the distilled essence of the blue blur. The developers have also been working on implementing new ideas and improving the experience, which is welcome for a live service game.
Unfortunately, almost every positive with this game has some sort of caveat, which makes me question its long-term prospects. Ring Survival is a bit lacking in variety at present and doesn’t feel very winnable if you don’t place really well in its first stage. Its monetization can feel almost predatory especially with purchasable upgrades that provide tangible advantages in stages, and the restriction on game modes availability is disappointing. I don’t regret my time playing Sonic Rumble and had a share of fun, but I also don’t see myself coming back to this game years down the line. I don’t love drawing comparisons to competitors on the market, but it’s hard to find a reason to keep playing Sonic Rumble over its generally superior competition.
SONIC RUMBLE IS WORTH A TRY
If you are looking for more Sonic, check out our review of Sonic X Shadow Generations.
The reviewer played Sonic Rumble on the PC version.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
