Today’s trip on the Mirage Express marks a beginning and an ending. As a new employee, it’s your first day serving as waiter on board this luxury train. But it’s also the conductor’s last day after many years of service. These events coincide with another, a murder mystery party to mark a birthday. One more year, observed and celebrated. The occasion is spent with friends, minus Sonic, who is dead. Or, hopefully, pretending to be.

Your waiter gets roped into being the Watson to Tails’ Sherlock, or perhaps the Tails to Tails’ Sonic. As an outsider to the group, you’ll be getting to know everyone through a filter: each attendee has been given a role to play, and a hidden motive. But how does truth pass amongst those who are trying to be who they’re not? And how successful can that ever be?

I, too, am playing a role. My character may have been a stranger to these people, but I’m not. I’ve been playing Sonic games for decades. I know Tails, and I even know Blaze. I’ve met them on adventures and known them in peril. But those, too, are roles. To meet them in another light is to see a different side of the same person.

The mystery is trivial. Often, so are parties. But meaning can be made in a trivial space. To spend time with these characters, in this light, is to meet them all over again, even as you’re meeting them through interrogations and presentations of evidence. These conversations are almost always funny, as characters share parts of themselves or argue. At times, they’re even vulnerable. That happens at parties, too. It’s not all sweet, though; in its final moments, the game sends some mixed messages on how identity gets filtered through roles, and how we respond to those who aren’t invited to the party. There’s a generous read of the game’s ending, but it wasn’t the first one that came to mind. I ultimately came to believe that generous interpretation, but the party still ended on a sour note for me.

Some have maligned Sonic games for their expansive cast, and recent entries have focused solely on the titular hedgehog. I’ve enjoyed those, but I’d like to see more games that take a risk on some of these side players. They don’t always need to kill the main guy off, though. Sonic games don’t need to end for new kinds of games to begin.

Played on PC for review. Game completed in just over three hours.