SONIC PICO PARK Brings Sonic Into the Indie Co-Op World

SONIC PICO PARK, a Sonic-licensed co-op puzzle game built on PICO PARK’s key-and-door formula, was unveiled by TECOPARK and SEGA at Summer Game Fest on June 5, targeting a 2026 release. Up to four players work through stages packed with springs, loop-de-loops, and rings, with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy standing in for the original game’s coloured squares. The announcement came inside a Sonic 35th anniversary trailer that also confirmed a second season pass for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, fronted by Godzilla and Evangelion packs among six new DLC planned for Year Two.

Since the racer launched its first season pass, its DLC roster has pulled in Minecraft, SpongeBob SquarePants, PAC-MAN, Mega Man, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Avatar: The Last Airbender across six waves, with the Turtles arriving in July and Avatar in October to close out Year One.

Sonic, Tails, and a Key-and-Door Puzzle

The game’s structure follows the key-and-door formula. Players collect a key and guide everyone through an unlocked exit, but stages layer in gimmicks designed to make that cooperation actively messy. In the Sonic version, those gimmicks pull from the franchise’s vocabulary: springs that launch players across the screen, loop-de-loops that require momentum to clear, and rings scattered through the layout. Sonic’s stages use each of these as a mechanical twist on the original formula. Springs necessary to reach a platform also send adjacent players offscreen; rings scattered as level scenery can pull teammates off their intended route; loop-de-loops require enough momentum that a slower player can stall the group entirely. The original design even enables players to block each other from reaching the exit, which the press release flags with the promise of “plenty of chaos to go around.”

The game was announced with an official reveal on the Sonic the Hedgehog account on June 5, described as featuring “signature puzzle-driven co-op action” with a Sonic twist. No console platforms were named at the reveal. Push Square noted that no PICO PARK title has appeared on PlayStation to date, a possible indicator of where the Sonic version ends up.

• Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy are the playable cast, each taking the slot of one of the original game’s coloured figures
• Up to four players supported in co-op
• Steam wishlist live at announcement; no console platforms confirmed as of June 5

TECOPARK’s Path from Local Co-Op to Sonic Partner

TECOPARK is two people. Teco handles design, programming, and art; Tadosule composes the soundtracks. Teco described his reason for building the original game simply: he wanted friends “to get together and play on one screen,” and felt that local co-op had grown hard to find. The design drew inspiration from Saturn Bomberman (which supported ten simultaneous players) and The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords.

The studio’s first release was the PICO PARK Classic Edition on Steam, which launched in April 2016. Nintendo Switch followed in June 2019, and a full online multiplayer update arrived in May 2021. The sequel released on Nintendo Switch in August 2024 and on PC and Xbox the following month, later gaining a Switch 2 update that added Joy-Con mouse-controlled stages. The 2021 main version has accumulated around 9,200 user reviews on Steam averaging a Very Positive rating.

The Classic Edition ended its paid life by accident. The developer updated it in late 2025 and triggered a Steam rule it hadn’t anticipated: once a game moves from paid to free, the platform does not allow the reverse. “I was planning to switch to a paid plan after updating the online support,” the developer wrote, “but I forgot that once you switch from paid to free, I can never go back to paid!” The Classic Edition became permanently free overnight. The studio confirmed it would delist the title on June 14 and added a separate note: “We have done our utmost to ensure that this decision causes as little inconvenience as possible.” It closed with a line that now reads differently alongside the SONIC PICO PARK reveal: “The Pico Park series will continue, so stay tuned.”

The delisting announcement came nine days before SONIC PICO PARK’s June 5 reveal. The studio’s next publicly announced project is a SEGA license.

CrossWorlds Mapped Six IP Waves Across Year One

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds launched with 23 Sonic characters on Steam, the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. Season Pass 1 then extended the game’s IP footprint across six waves of third-party crossovers, pulling from gaming, animation, and pop culture. Season Pass 2 was announced in the same trailer as the Season Pass 1 finales, meaning both seasons were revealed simultaneously at the showcase.

Four characters also came as free updates: Hatsune Miku, Joker from Persona 5 Royal, Ichiban Kasuga from Like a Dragon, and Arle, added in a recent patch. The game’s roadmap cites three more free crossover characters before Year Two begins.

The TMNT pack, based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, brings all four Turtles (Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo) as racers, along with the Party Wagon van, a New York sewer course, and new TMNT-themed music tracks. The Avatar Legends pack adds Aang and Katara, with an elemental-bending track where gates shift the terrain between all four elements, plus Avatar-inspired music tracks, vehicles, and emotes.

Godzilla, Evangelion, and What Comes After

Season Pass 2 carries six new DLC packs in total. The CrossWorlds Year Two announcement on June 5 confirmed two of them: a Godzilla DLC Pack and an EVANGELION DLC Pack, each described as featuring “intense courses, larger-than-life characters, and more.” The other four packs remain unannounced, with details promised before 2026 ends.

• Godzilla DLC Pack: TOHO’s kaiju franchise, bringing new courses and outsized characters to the kart-racing format
• EVANGELION DLC Pack: Khara’s mecha anime series, with themed content for Neon Genesis Evangelion fans
• Four additional packs unannounced; details promised before the end of 2026

The second pack, Neon Genesis Evangelion (which concluded its theatrical run with a 2021 film), carries dense mythology and a fanbase that skews considerably older than Sonic’s core audience. The company has not detailed how either IP adapts to the kart-racing format beyond the “intense courses” language.

Sonic’s Thirty-Fifth Year as a Licensing Platform

The Summer Game Fest slate sat within a broader anniversary push that extends well beyond consoles. PUMA announced a sneaker capsule featuring Sonic, Tails, and Shadow, planned for fall; specific designs have not been detailed yet. SEGA Music launched a vocal theme compilation titled “Forever Fast” as part of the anniversary. The Sonic Speed Cafe pop-up concept, a themed food-and-merchandise experience that previously ran in Texas, is opening its first Missouri location in St. Louis. Good Smile Company also announced two new Nendoroid Surprise mini-figures in June, blind-box releases at 70mm featuring Sonic and Shadow as part of the anniversary goods calendar.

On the game side, Sonic Frontiers has been circling a re-release for months. A Korean ratings board entry for Sonic Frontiers Definitive Edition surfaced earlier this year, and SEGA’s Steam page changes for Sonic Frontiers in May pointed toward a re-release, with a price cut that rarely precedes anything other than a follow-up product. A Walmart pre-order listing surfaced on the eve of the showcase showing a $49.99 price point and a June 23 release date, though the company has not officially confirmed either figure.

SONIC PICO PARK sits at the indie end of that slate, a licensed project from a two-person studio, announced with a single trailer and a “soon” on release specifics. No date has been set for additional game details; the four unannounced Season Pass Two packs are equally open-ended, with updates committed only for sometime before 2026 closes.