Beloved beagle Snoopy was a gaming mainstay in the ‘80s, with even Nintendo acquiring the Peanuts license for a range of Game & Watch handhelds. The ‘90s however ushered in a new wave of gaming, fuelled by fast paced and often violent action titles. In fact, it took a CGI movie for the Peanuts gang to enter the HD era. That tie-in was released in 2015, making this return to consoles a long time coming. In the past decade or so the demand for cosy and wholesome adventures has increased massively, and nobody fits that bill more than Snoopy and co.
True to its name, this adventure is based around Snoopy and his chums establishing a mystery club and setting about solving said mysteries. Unsurprisingly, the stakes are low. It wasn’t as if we were going to see Charlie Brown hot on the heels of a serial killer. There is just enough depth to the four mysteries – lasting around an hour each – for them to engage though, including eerie music coming from the town’s theatre prior to a school concert, and sightings of a Nessy-like monster at the summer camp’s lake. Snoopy’s quaint hometown can be explored freely, and every chapter adds a new location, such as the school, a picturesque forest, plus the previously mentioned theatre and camp.
Snoopy is under your control, with Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty and others joining your team and trailing behind. It appears to use the 2015 CGI movie’s character designs, recreated here with precise detail, and all dialogue is fully voiced – with the obvious exception being Snoopy, who instead makes twee sounds. The pooch gradually unlocks new outfits, ergo new skills, with the full roster available as early as the second chapter. These are all tied into exploration, with Gardner Snoopy armed with a leaf blower, Pirate Snoopy able to dig, and Detective Snoopy able to follow footprints and trails. The venerable beagle can also use a metal detector, which duly requires you to switch to Pirate Snoopy each time to dig up missing items.
A typical mystery involves talking to other characters while running back and forth across town (fast travel via a bus is an option, thankfully), carrying out fetch quests, following footprints, and playing mini-games such as baseball batting, football field goal practise, and a card-based memory game. Smartly, some of these are situational and tied into mystery solving, such as kicking a ball to dislodge a high-up item. There’s a soapbox cart racer mini-game too, although it doesn’t amount to much more than moving left and right to pass through gates. Even simpler are the hidden object quests, one of which we were able to solve before it had even begun.
Helping to keep progress swift and navigation easy, the current objective is always on screen while the town map has icons to indicate where to head next. Every searchable area has a boundary too, preventing from aimless wandering.
The first three chapters end with Snoopy taking to the skies to fend off the Red Baron, prompting a dash to his iconic red kennel. These flight sequences are likewise simple, which is perhaps what you’d expect from something aimed at younger gamers. In typical mystery game fashion, every mystery must be wrapped up too, which involves selecting four pieces of correlating evidence. It’s a neat and satisfying way to bring each chapter to a conclusion and is usually accompanied by a cut-scene – including a recreation of the famous Peanuts gang dance.
The game’s biggest problem is that even with fast travel there is a lot of backtracking, which eventually starts to feel like padding. Having to trek from the school and into the forest just to find a missing set of keys was enough to cause an eyeroll and an audible sigh. Flowing footprints can be fatiguing too, especially if tracks start to head in different directions. None of its flaws are too detrimental though, as the 5-6 hour playtime is perfect for something simplistic like this, concluding before it starts to overstay its welcome. A few bonus mini-games are available from the main menu, helping to extend the playtime, and using comic strips as collectables is a nice feature. So much so that we found ourselves going off the beaten path to find more.
So far this year’s releases from GameMill have been a marked improvement over their past licensed works, with Goosebumps Terror in Little Creek and Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny both being pretty good. The same applies to Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club, which genuinely feels as if it’s something the developers wanted to create, going as far to incorporate The Kite-Eating Tree along with other sights from the comic strips. The fact that this is an open-world game – albeit one with not much incentive to explore – may surprise players too, while making it feel reasonably ambitious. No, it isn’t the most thrilling of adventures – which is precisely the point – but it is rather wholesome, and nobody can deny that it hasn’t been handled with care.
Cradle Games’ Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club is out now on all formats. Published by GameMill.