For a video game review, I turn to the AAUGH Blog’s Video Game Specialist (and my dAAUGHter), Allison.

Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club (released today on Steam, Switch, Playstation, and X-Box) is a video game in the literal sense of the term. Is it a good video game? I’d argue not particularly, and it lacks several small touches that could bring it from annoying to charming. 

You play as Snoopy, with “The Great Mystery Club” mostly consisting of Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty (although Lucy, Marcie, and Schroeder join your group sometimes). Of the “mysteries” in question, half are lost items, while the other half are seemingly supernatural.

I should start with the positives: the background music is acceptable, if not as catchy as the classic Vince Guaraldi tunes of the specials. The graphics, especially the talk sprites, seem clearly inspired by The Peanuts Movie. My biggest point for this release is the voice acting: the Peanuts gang are fully voice acted, and while I don’t know if these actors have been used in other Peanuts projects or if this cast is specific to the game, the voices they provide are good. 

The negatives, however, weigh this project down. Some are smaller details that make a difference, while others are more fundamental. 

The world of the game is vast and empty, with a few “important” locations and lots of running between them. What also feels “empty” in a way are the characters. The characters of Peanuts have a wide range of facial expressions, and this game includes… two. Two facial expressions for basically everyone. The classic wobbly smile that’s plastered on them 99% of the time, and screaming. This is true for both the character models and talk sprites. This isn’t true for the titular Snoopy, if only because he appears to only have the singular smiling expression. There is no lip movement (which is a bit unnerving when paired with the full voice acting), and the lack of expressions carries over to the talk sprites. Even when characters are clearly distressed, they still sit there, quite literally unblinking, with a dopey smile on their face (Snoopy should not look that happy about his supper being gone before he eats it!).

To add to that, if an NPC is not either part of the group following you around or the direct next step in the quest, they can still be on the map. That is not inherently bad, however, it is vaguely unnerving to try exploring the school and wander in on Marcie just standing in the arts and crafts room, unable to acknowledge you. You cannot talk to her until the plot demands it. 

The lack of nonessential interactivity is one of my major issues with this game. Not being able to talk to other characters when they aren’t important is one part of it, but there’s also the lack of objects to interact with. It would be one thing, I think, if only the “evidence” or items you needed to find were interactable. It would still feel empty, but empty in a different way. Instead, there are interactable objects that sometimes have the in-game collectible marbles in them. By collectible, here I mean “able to be accumulated” as opposed to unique objects– they’re a currency to unlock three costumes for Snoopy and are used exactly twice in the actual game progression. They respawn whenever you re-enter an area, so don’t do what I did and try to actively hunt them down thinking they’re unique objects. However, if interacting with an object doesn’t net you marbles, then Charlie Brown makes a sad little comment, and that sad little comment is most of what you’ll be hearing. It’s a shame, because the prologue of the game specifically has those little nonessential things for Snoopy to look at: he comments on Woodstock’s “office” (birdhouse) and Charlie Brown’s favorite spot to sit. It’s small, but it adds some life to the game. There are a few sprinklers you can turn on and mailboxes to open and close in the rest of the game, but the charm of the flavor text never returns. 

Quests in Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club are often poorly linked to what you actually need to do. For example: you need Schroeder to help you with something, but his piano is broken, and he needs some wood from Franklin who has just built a soapbox car (the source of the most irritating minigame in the game) and so is expected to have extra wood. However, Franklin needs wood for his next soapbox car, so he sends you into the forest to get some. You give Franklin the forest wood, he gives you the piano wood. So Schroeder will help you now? No. He still needs five piano strings. You go to the garage to get the piano strings, bring them back, and now Schroeder needs glue. OK, fine, you go to the arts and crafts room so Marcie can mix some glue, bring it back, and… no, Schroeder needs specific glue. Glue he lent to Pigpen. So now you go find Pigpen and talk to him to get the glue (which he apparently left somewhere else and you need to go find) and by that point you’ve almost certainly forgotten what you actually need Schroeder to help you with. Most of the quests are like this, meandering to an extent you forget what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.

Snoopy’s system of costumes-as-abilities is… fine, I suppose. It’s certainly one of the most understandable bits of the game. However several of the abilities are triggered by holding down a button (ZR or sometimes ZL on the Switch) and, simply put, Many of these abilities would greatly benefit from being toggled with the button instead of needing to be held down. Also, some abilities use controller rumble to a truly distracting degree.

To end the negatives with a more minor nitpick, one of Snoopy’s costumes is a “gardener”, which has a leafblower as its powerup, able to blow away piles of fall-colored leaves (even if the actual trees are green for most of the game). For something making distinct connections to It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, with the Great Pumpkin mentioned and the pumpkin patch as a permanent location on the map, you’d think the way to clear these neatly piled leaves would be by jumping into them (although perhaps not with a wet sucker). No, instead the neighborhood kids (and their dog) keep borrowing Pigpen’s leafblower. Ah well. 

Interestingly, the fourth and final chapter of the game is almost certainly the best. While many of the problems are still the same, the pacing feels a lot smoother, the quests feel a bit more relevant, and the mystery is more than a lost item. The bespoke area for just this chapter certainly helps, it’s smaller and kind of refreshing just by virtue of the fact that you’ve been running around the same neighborhood for most of the game. Were the rest of the game like this chapter, I think I would appreciate it a lot more. This chapter does feature a couple camera-related bugs in cutscenes, but that may or may not be fixed eventually.

I recognize I’m not the target demographic for this game. While Peanuts as a whole is for everyone, this game is very clearly aimed at children, maybe ages 8 or younger. However, children still deserve well designed video games, and I don’t think this necessarily qualifies. If you’re looking at this game as an adult who enjoys Peanuts, rest assured that there’s nothing outstanding you’re missing. If you’re considering it for a child, unless that child is the most diehard Peanuts fan, I’d say there are plenty of other video games that are kid friendly while having better gameplay experiences.

Note: A review copy of the game was provided to the AAUGH Blog by the manufacturer, GameMill Entertainment.

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