Sonic Frontiers is a 2022 platform game created by Sonic Team and released by Sega for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The story follows Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends, who become stranded in an artificial world called Cyber Space on the Starfall Islands after falling into a wormhole. Sonic escapes and begins a mission to rescue his friends by defeating the islands’ "Titans." The game combines classic elements from the Sonic the Hedgehog series with an open world design. Players control Sonic as he explores the islands to collect Chaos Emeralds, which are needed to defeat the Titans. This is done by completing challenges that involve jumping, solving puzzles, and fighting enemies.
After the release of Sonic Forces in 2017, Sonic Team worked on ideas for its next game. Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team, wanted Sonic Frontiers to serve as a model for future Sonic games, similar to how Sonic Adventure (1998) influenced earlier titles. The team focused on creating an open-ended game that allowed players to explore freely while adapting Sonic’s abilities to fit this style. Sonic Frontiers was announced in December 2021 and released on November 8, 2022.
Critics generally praised the game’s visuals, story, and music but noted technical problems that made it feel unfinished. Reviews of the controls and combat were mixed, with some praising the variety of actions and others finding the combat repetitive or unengaging. Fans of the series liked the game more. It was a commercial success, selling 4.5 million copies by 2025.
Gameplay
Sonic Frontiers is a 3D platformer and action-adventure game. As Sonic, players explore the Starfall Islands, which include different areas like flowery fields, forests, ancient ruins, and deserts. The goal is to collect Chaos Emeralds and learn how the islands are connected to them. Sonic keeps his abilities from earlier games, such as running fast, collecting rings, grinding on rails, and attacking enemies by homing in on them. Players can make Sonic double jump, sidestep, drop dash, and boost if he has enough energy. New abilities include fighting enemies, running along walls, and using the Cyloop to create a circle of light around objects. The Cyloop can do different tasks by drawing shapes, like an infinity symbol or the number 8, which lets Sonic boost forever for a short time. Sonic can also boost forever temporarily if he collects the most rings possible. Players can change controls and adjust the game’s difficulty, as well as Sonic’s speed, turning, acceleration, and sensitivity. As players progress, they can improve Sonic’s speed, attack, defense, ring capacity, and boost gauge.
The Starfall Islands are the first open world in the Sonic series, similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The world includes traditional Sonic features like springs, boost pads, and grind rails. Players solve puzzles, such as placing statues correctly or completing speed challenges, to uncover parts of the map and find items. One of Sonic’s goals is to rescue three friends—Miles “Tails” Prower, Amy Rose, and Knuckles the Echidna—who are trapped in Cyber Space. This is done by collecting items found in the open world. Collectibles include Kocos, which increase Sonic’s speed and ring capacity; New Kocos, which improve his boost gauge; Red Seeds of Power and Blue Seeds of Defense, which boost attack strength and reduce damage; Sound Memories, which add songs to the Jukebox; and Memory Tokens, which trigger cutscenes and conversations with Sonic’s friends. These items help advance the story or complete side quests. Sonic’s friends appear as holograms in the real world while trapped, offering advice. Action Chain Challenges in the open world require players to perform actions to earn points. Getting an S-rank on all challenges unlocks Sonic’s Spin Dash.
Players fight robots in various forms across the islands. Sonic can dodge, parry attacks, and use the Cyloop to make enemies easier to hit. Defeating enemies gives experience points, which let players buy new moves and abilities. Players also fight large “Guardian” bosses. Beating a Guardian gives portal gears, which are used to enter Cyber Space.
There are 30 Cyber Space levels that switch between third-person and side-scrolling views. Each level has three optional goals, such as time attacks, collecting rings, or gathering five red rings. Completing these goals gives keys needed to collect Chaos Emeralds. Big the Cat appears as a host for a fishing minigame in certain areas. Sonic can trade purple coins found in the world for fishing tokens based on how good his catches are. Tokens can be used to get items and collectibles. Collecting all seven Chaos Emeralds lets Sonic transform into Super Sonic, which is needed to fight major bosses called Titans. Completing all challenges and side stories on each island, maxing out Sonic’s stats (except for boost), or setting the game’s difficulty to Hard or Extreme before fighting Supreme reveals a secret final boss battle with The End and a post-credits scene.
The game does not have postgame content, as it resets the save file to just before getting the final Chaos Emerald. However, defeating The End unlocks Battle Rush (a boss rush mode), a Cyber Space Challenge mode, and an Arcade Mode for Cyber Space stages. It also unlocks New Game +, which resets the save file but keeps player stats (except on Extreme difficulty), allowing the story to be replayed.
The “Final Horizon” update adds “Another Story,” which lets players control Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, each with unique skills. It also introduces a new “true” final boss, a revised version of The End, allowing Super Sonic to use cyber energy powers like Perfect Parry. Save slots for “Another Story” are separate from the main game. Completing this mode unlocks a “true ending” that expands the story.
Plot
Doctor Eggman goes to the Starfall Islands, a group of islands that are no longer used, to take technology made by the Ancients, who are the ancestors of the Chao. When he sends his artificial intelligence unit, Sage, through a portal, robotic defense units are activated. Sage detects a threat and stops taking control of the portal. Instead, it starts a safety system that brings the Chaos Emeralds to the islands and pulls Eggman into a fake world called Cyber Space.
Sonic, Tails, and Amy look into why the Chaos Emeralds have been moving, but their plane is pulled into a wormhole to Cyber Space. Sonic escapes to the real world and finds a voice telling him to find the emeralds and destroy the island’s robotic Titans to stop the boundary between the real and digital worlds. Sonic believes this will save his friends, including Knuckles, who was sent to Cyber Space while exploring Angel Island. Sonic frees his friends’ digital forms from cages made by Sage, who is trying to help Eggman escape Cyber Space. When the cages are destroyed, Sonic’s body becomes more damaged. Sage tells Sonic to leave, but she causes the islands’ mechanical guardians and Titans to attack him. However, Sage begins to feel sorry for Sonic after seeing how he treats his friends. At the same time, Sage and Eggman develop a close family-like relationship.
Through visions from the Koco, Sonic and his friends learn that the Ancients were an alien race whose planet was destroyed by "The End," a powerful being. The Ancients used the Chaos Emeralds to escape and traveled to Earth, where they found the Master Emerald. However, The End followed them and tried to destroy their new home. The Titans were built to trap The End in Cyber Space, and the Ancients’ spirits remain inside the Koco. The Koco become inactive once Sonic and his friends help them complete their final wishes.
After defeating three Titans and disabling the towers that keep the boundary between worlds, Sonic becomes too damaged and is stuck between dimensions. He is released with his friends and Eggman, and his guide is revealed to be The End. Sonic’s friends give up their physical forms to remove the damage from him. Sage and Eggman help Sonic collect the scattered Chaos Emeralds to fight The End, who attacks Earth using the last Titan, Supreme. Sonic defeats Supreme and uses it with Sage to fight The End’s true form, and Sage sacrifices herself to destroy The End. Sonic’s friends are healed and leave the islands with him, now wanting to help others. Later, Eggman uses the island’s technology to bring Sage back to life.
"Another Story" is an alternate ending in the game’s "Final Horizon" update. After his friends give up their lives, Sonic agrees to Sage’s plan to restore them and his damage, which he could turn into more power to fight The End. His friends return as holograms, and they retrieve the Chaos Emeralds while Sonic faces challenges watched over by the souls of the Titans’ pilots and the Ancients’ leader, Master King. After receiving the Ancients’ blessings and being cured of his damage, Master King gives Sonic temporary control over cyber energy. Sonic combines this with his super form to destroy Supreme and The End. Later, Sonic reunites with his friends, and Eggman and Sage return home as a family.
Development
After finishing Sonic Forces, the team began thinking about what to do next. They realized that traditional 3D Sonic games had limited room for new ideas. Making a game similar to what fans had already seen would not be enough. This led the team to discuss how to change the game’s linear style, where players follow a set path.
Following the release of Sonic Forces in 2017, Sonic Team explored new ideas for the next Sonic game. They wanted to celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary and define what a modern Sonic game should be. Takashi Iizuka, the team’s leader, believed the series needed to take a new direction, similar to how Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) and Sonic Adventure (1998) influenced later games. Sonic Forces faced criticism for its short length and level design, so its director, Morio Kishimoto, decided the team’s old method of designing levels, used in Sonic Unleashed (2008), was no longer satisfying fans. The team concluded that the traditional linear design of Sonic games had "little room for evolution" and could not continue in that direction. Iizuka believed 3D Sonic games limited players’ freedom and forced them to follow linear paths. He stated the goal of Frontiers was to "evolve the linear, stage-clearing 3D action […] into a new action-packed adventure game where players have the freedom to explore the environment around them."
The idea for an open-world Sonic game came from Kishimoto, who admired how the platform genre’s world map concept, popularized by Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1988, evolved over time. While some Sonic games, like Sonic Adventure, had world maps, Kishimoto felt his idea improved the concept by combining it with gameplay. He believed this would allow more freedom and variety in gameplay.
Kishimoto returned as the director of Frontiers, while Sonic Unleashed (2008), Generations (2011), and Forces art director Sachiko Kawamura worked on the game. Development of Frontiers took five years, longer than previous Sonic games. Iizuka said the length was partly because the game did not build on previous Sonic gameplay. Determining the game’s direction required trial and error, and development was restarted from scratch at one point. Sonic Team held external playtesting during development. The COVID-19 pandemic began during production, forcing the team to work remotely for the first time. Iizuka noted this made it harder to see the "big picture," but digital communication helped speed up other parts of development.
Designers focused on adapting Sonic’s speed and abilities for an open-world design while staying true to previous games. They chose a mysterious tone to reflect Sonic exploring an unfamiliar world. Iizuka said Frontiers remained a 3D action game, different from adventure or role-playing games like The Legend of Zelda. Kishimoto preferred to call Frontiers an "open zone" instead of an "open world" because it refers to a freely explorable area in a Sonic game, not a broader term. When designing Frontiers, the team used their experience creating hub worlds in Sonic Adventure and tested how fast Sonic could move through the open world to decide its size. Iizuka said the biggest challenge was making fast-paced exploration fun. The team avoided increasing difficulty as the game progressed because the open world provided enough content.
Sonic Team prioritized combat more than in previous games, but they felt Frontiers would not feel like a Sonic game without platforming elements. This required balancing platforming with exploration. The team’s solution was to unlock parts of the world as rewards for completing challenges. Developers wanted players to choose between combat and platforming, so they included puzzles and other ways to collect items outside of fighting. The 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog movie influenced development; Kishimoto asked the team to add Easter eggs referencing it and base combat on the movie’s depiction of Sonic. The game’s Cyber Space environments were modeled after levels from older Sonic games. When designing these levels, Kishimoto wanted Sonic to "once again… stand amongst the other 'stage-clear' action games" he enjoyed, like Sega Genesis-era Sonic games and the Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and Kirby series.
Ian Flynn, who wrote Sonic the Hedgehog comics for Archie Comics and IDW Publishing and episodes of the Sonic Boom TV series, wrote the script. Iizuka asked Flynn to write Frontiers after reading his work on IDW comics. He believed Flynn understood the Sonic characters and would improve their emotions and dialogue. Iizuka noted the story was less humorous and did not clearly show the player’s goal, instead challenging players to solve problems on their own.
Unlike previous projects, where Flynn pitched his own stories, Sega decided the premise of Frontiers and which characters Flynn could use. Flynn called it "a dream come true" to write a major Sonic game and shared ideas for using more characters with the team. Kishimoto said this created a "cooperative back and forth." Because of the nonlinear story, Flynn found pacing the story was "the biggest question" and "had to be massaged and revised as the game’s structure took shape." Kishimoto did the Japanese localization using Flynn’s script as a base, making changes for the Japanese market.
Tomoya Ohtani was the lead composer and sound director for Frontiers. The soundtrack is less upbeat and focuses on creating a mysterious feeling around the islands. Ohtani composed the main theme, "I'm Here," with vocals and lyrics by Merry Kirk-Holmes of To Octavia. The song plays during the battle against Supreme, with the vocal track playing in its second phase. Sleeping with Sirens vocalist Kellin Quinn appears on earlier Titan battle themes: "Undefeatable" (Giganto), "Break Through It All" (Wyvern), and "Find Your Flame" (Knight). Tyler Smyth of DangerKids is featured on the third track. "Another Story" includes an orchestral version of "I'm Here" and a heavier remix called "I'm Here – Revisited," with re-recorded vocals by Quinn. Both versions play in the revamped The End battle. Japanese rock band One Ok Rock wrote and performed a censored version of one of the four ending themes, "Vandalize," which also appears on their tenth studio album Luxury Disease as the uncensored version. The other three ending themes are "Dear Father," "One Way Dream," and "I'm with you – Vocal ver.," performed by Quinn Barnitt, Nathan Sharp, and Gaby Borro, respectively. The latter only appears in "Another Story." Additional music was written by Kenichi Tokoi, Takahito Eguchi, Rintaro Soma, Kenji Mizuno, Kanon Oguni, and Hiroshi Kawaguchi, with additional vocals from Japanese singer YURI and Japanese-American singer Seann Bowe. The soundtrack album, Stillness & Motion, was released on December 7, 2022. It includes 150 tracks spanning 6 hours and 37 minutes, making it the longest in the series. The album debuted in the top 10 for the U.
Marketing and release
Sega first planned to release Sonic Frontiers in 2021 to match the franchise's 30th anniversary but delayed the game by one year to ensure quality. Development ended on October 22, 2022, and the game was released on November 8, 2022, for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Sega shared a teaser trailer at the end of a 30th-anniversary livestream on May 27, 2021. The trailer showed Sonic running through a forest, but the game's title was not announced at that time. Later, the trailer's metadata and a Sega press release revealed the title Sonic Rangers. Iizuka, a developer, later stated that the game was teased too early but believed it was necessary because it was the series's 30th anniversary and no new Sonic game had been announced since Sonic Forces. Sega officially trademarked Sonic Frontiers in November 2021 and announced the title at the Game Awards 2021 in December.
Sega worked with the video game news website IGN to promote Frontiers in June 2022. A trailer was shown during the opening night of Gamescom on August 23, 2022. In Japan, the game offered downloadable content (DLC) in partnership with VTuber Inugami Korone, available to players who pre-ordered the game. Additional material, titled Sonic Frontiers Prologue, was sold as pre-release promotional content. This included an eight-page comic, Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Convergence, released in October 2022, and an animated short, Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Divergence, released on November 1. The comic was created by Evan Stanley, an artist and writer for IDW's Sonic comic series, while the animation was directed by Tyson Hesse. Both were written by Flynn.
Frontiers was sold in physical and digital formats, with pre-order bonuses including in-game items. A Digital Deluxe edition also included extra items, a digital artbook, and a mini digital soundtrack featuring music from Kronos Island. Players who signed up for the official newsletter before January 31, 2023, received a free DLC code to unlock Sonic's Soap shoes from Sonic Adventure 2 (2001). A free DLC pack was released on November 14, 2022, adding cosmetics inspired by Capcom's Monster Hunter series and a cooking minigame. Several content updates were announced before The Game Awards 2022. The first update, "Sights, Sounds, and Speed," added a Battle Rush mode, a Cyber Space Challenge mode, a photo mode, and a jukebox with music from Sonic's history. The second update, "Sonic's Birthday Bash," included quality-of-life improvements, birthday-themed cosmetics, New Koco for boosting, New Game +, Action Chain Challenges, and the return of the Spin Dash. The third major update, "The Final Horizon," released on September 28, 2023, added Tails, Knuckles, and Amy as playable characters and overhauled the game's climax with new challenges.
Some retailers sold copies of Sonic Frontiers before the official release date, and the Nintendo Switch version was uploaded online. The game's composer, Tomoya Ohtani, expressed sadness about the leaks and asked players not to spoil the game.
Reception
Nintendo Life said early gameplay footage of Sonic Frontiers caused different opinions. Kotaku thought the game looked okay but not unique, and said it lacked the series' special style. Polygon and Nintendo Life both said the open world felt empty or lonely. Some fans wanted the game to be delayed, and the hashtag #DelaySonicFrontiers became popular on Twitter. Iizuka from Sonic Team said he expected early reactions to be mixed, as the early footage might not show the game's full potential.
According to Metacritic, the PlayStation 4 and Windows versions of Sonic Frontiers received mostly positive reviews. Other console versions received mixed or average reviews.
Video Games Chronicle said the controls were improved but still had some problems. Destructoid praised how much freedom players had in controlling Sonic. Game Informer said Sonic moves "remarkably well" in the open world. Nintendo Life said the controls were sometimes good and sometimes not. Push Square noted that the game sometimes took control away from the player.
Combat received mixed opinions. Digital Trends and Game Informer said the combat was fun, with Game Informer calling it "comprehensive." However, Digital Trends criticized how bosses looked in big fights. GameSpot said the combat was simple but had many types of enemies. IGN said the combat was repetitive and not exciting, as battles against faceless robotic enemies slowed down the fast-paced gameplay.
Video Games Chronicle said Sonic Frontiers was the most visually and aurally impressive Sonic game yet. Shacknews called the visuals "stunning." IGN and VentureBeat said technical issues caused large objects to appear suddenly, breaking immersion and reducing the game's polish.
The soundtrack received praise. Push Square said Sonic Frontiers might have "the best soundtrack in the series," highlighting its lo-fi and rock themes. Brian Shea from Game Informer said the music helped create memorable moments. GameSpot said the music was calming and compared it to Breath of the Wild. Shacknews called the soundtrack "phenomenal," with boss battle music standing out.
Sonic Frontiers was well received by fans. The Washington Post said many liked the controls, freedom, story, references to older Sonic games, and soundtrack. In its first weeks, the game had over 9,000 reviews on Steam, 95% of which were positive. It also set a record for the most players online at the same time for a Sonic game on Steam, surpassing Sonic Mania.
The Nintendo Switch version of Sonic Frontiers was the fourth best-selling retail game in Japan during its first week, selling 26,067 physical copies. The PlayStation 5 version was the seventh best-selling retail game, selling 11,111 copies. The PlayStation 4 version sold 9,098 copies and was the eighth best-selling retail game of the week, totaling 46,276 copies and outselling God of War Ragnarök. In the United States, Sonic Frontiers was the fourth best-selling game in November and the 16th best-selling game of the year. On December 12, 2022, Sega announced the game had sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide. Sales later reached 3.2 million in March 2023, 3.5 million in May 2023, and 4.5 million by 2025.
Sonic Frontiers was nominated in the Players' Voice category at The Game Awards 2022 but lost to Genshin Impact. At the 2023 Japan Game Awards, it was one of eleven titles to receive an "Award for Excellence."
A location from the game, Chaos Island, appears as a playable area in Shadow Generations. Sage, a character introduced in Sonic Frontiers, is a playable racer, and Kronos Island and Cyber Space are tracks in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.
In March 2026, the Game Rating and Administration Committee of South Korea updated a database to include a rating for Sonic Frontiers Definitive Edition. As of March 27, the title had not been officially announced.