Sonic Dream Team (New 3D Game from Hardlight, coming to Apple Arcade December 5)

ohhhh... shes so pretty!! very "dreamy", which of course is the intent, i imagine. i love this design a lot... </useless lesbian>

anyway, im quite excited to try out the game! i actually pay for apple arcade because it has some good "on the subway with no signal" time-wasters like ridiculous fishing and pocket card jockey(!!), so i'll definitely give this a try. hopefully i can finagle some HDMI over USB-C shenanigans and play on my monitor with a controller!

 

I like the look of the game. The aesthetic looks like an appealing follow up on the vibrant abstractions and elements of games like Lost World and Heroes to a degree.

On the one hand, the number of levels sounds fairly limited. On the other, the 'intricate' descriptor seems apt in that some of the spaces in the footage look fairly open and explorable. I wonder if the game will maintain traditional stage design or adopt more involved objectives and challenges to make for more replay value. It could be cool if the levels lean more toward being involved sandboxes to dig into rather than the conventional Act/Zone progression and structure we'd typically expect.

I also wonder if the game might be updated with additional content over time. It doesn't resemble the developer's prior mobile Sonic output or necessarily have monetization mechanisms suitable for such support, though.

 

I'm not familiar with Apple hardware. I have an Apple 4k TV due to my Spectrum subscription. I don't know how scalable Apple games are so I'm hoping I can run this thing.
I'm not upset about this like the rest of you. If Apple wants to penetrate the gaming industry and generate interest, this is what they need to do. And if they're funding the project, then that's fine. This project probably wouldnt exists without them. At least it's not like Epik where they just straight up buy an exclusivity deal mid development. My only problem is that

1. It's locked behind a subscription
2. It's at the mercy of these mobile stores where shit will not only get delisted, but just straight up don't fucking work at a certain point even if you have the old hardware.

I miss you every day...​

 

I like the character design in the animation. The little bit of gameplay and level design reminded me of Speed Simulator.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one weirdly reminded of Sonic Shuffle!

 

I wonder if it's a stealth sequel or if they're pretending like Shuffle never happened canonically.

 

If this isn't officially ported within 3 years, I fully support reverse engineering this.

That's all I'm saying.

Locking this behind a subscription only is 100% unacceptable. I don't care how much money Apple threw at SEGA for it.

 

I support pirating it right now. Also every other Sonic game

 

Me: I want SEGA to return to the surreal vibrant art-styles of Sonic's earlier years!

*monkey's paw curls*

 

Hey. Proof they can create new environments! This kind of looks like cyberspace as a game. I'm into it from the tiny bit they showed.

Sidenote: I don't know if the M-series chips are "underpowered" anymore. If you do audio/video, they're actually killer.

 

I wouldn't be surprised that it's canon but they just didn't want to use its setting (Maginaryworld etc etc). And Nightopia is probably off-limits due to NiGHTS being another IP.

 

Welp, guess I ain't playing it. Oh well.

 

I don't get the hype of Apple Arcade. It's just Netflix for mobile gamers.

 

What hype? Not even Apple heads are wild about the service from what I've seen.

 

I was upset at first but then I realized that locking a 3D game that most of the fanbase think looks good, with things we've been asking for like multiple playable characters from the beginning and big open levels that look and feel Sonic-y unlike Frontiers, to one service that not everyone can get access to is such a SEGA move that I can't stay upset.

 

For folks still mad that this is an Apple Exclusive, I understand, but you gotta have some perspective on how these deals tend to work.

Apple talks to developers about plans they might have, or asks if they have anything that's a good fit for their platform.
The developer works on a pitch, then shows it and asks for a deal.
Apple usually pays for the entirety of the development cost of the game, and then it is released for free, without any additional methods of revenue for that game.

So this game would not exist at all if not for this deal. Hopefully they retain enough staff to port this to other platforms after the exclusivity window ends, but since it's not a live service game and they aren't selling anything inside of the game, it's unlikely that the folks making this project will stay on much after the first or second round of bug fixes.

I talked to a friend who said it should run fine on any M1 devices since it's gotta run on slightly older iPhone chipsets, so if you want to play this as a console game, you could always pick up an M1 Mac Mini for a couple hundred bucks.

 

And that's not boneheaded?

 

Has the phrase "it's better than nothing" never seemed a bit silly to you? I remember Berserk 2016 getting a defense something like that.

 

I mean, even if it wasn't locked onto iPhones I wouldn't be playing this anyway because touch screen controls suck, especially for platformers..... but yeah, it is nice to see that even the mobile games get effort put into them now.