Editing The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (section)

==Development==
The idea of the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' social media team creating a project was first formulated in 2020, but the project itself would not be pitched until early 2022, when [[Katie Chrzanowski]], manager of the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog series|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' social media accounts, and a group of friends pitched the idea to a small team of [[Sega]] employees and collaborators. Chrzanowski would first pitch ideas to the core development group around late February or early March 2022, then at the end of march assisted the team in creating a internal pitch for the game, leading to the start of its development. The development team would work on the game alongside their usual day jobs.<ref name="Kot">{{Cite web |url=https://kotaku.com/murder-of-sonic-the-hedgehog-mystery-game-free-steam-1850344140 |title=The Making Of The Sonic Murder Game That Took The Internet By Storm |publisher=[[Wikipedia:Kotaku|Kotaku]] |date=21 April 2023 |accessdate=21 April 2023}}</ref><ref name="Thread">{{Cite web |date=31 March 2023 |title=Katie - MiniKitty (@KatieChrz) on X |url=https://x.com/KatieChrz/status/1641963753632845824 |work=X |accessdate=2 April 2023}}</ref>

Conceptualization for the game began with the idea of a Victorian murder mystery party, which to the idea of characters being assigned roles. The choice to make the game a visual novel was partially due to such games being relatively inexpensive to make, which allowed the game to be released for free. Non-''Sonic'' inspirations for the game came from a variety of sources, including the ''[[Wikipedia:Ace Attorney|Ace Attorney]]'' series and the murder mystery chapter in ''[[Wikipedia:Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door|Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door]]''. The decision on which roles to include was made by examining roles that made sense in similar stories, and modifying them to fit the tone of the game.<ref name="Kot"/>

[[Espio the Chameleon]] was at one point once considered to be assigned a "doctor" role, but was eventually changed to the "poet", as the role proved more engaging for the writers. The game's story would be written over the course of several months, while Greg Batha worked on developing the [[DreamGear]] minigames. Early plans to include [[Charmy Bee]] and [[Cream the Rabbit]] existed, although these were eventually decided against due to the development team believing both characters were too young to take part in a murder mystery game.<ref name="Kot"/>

Early ideas for the main character of the game included selecting one member of the cast to play as, although this was eventually decided against in favor of creating a [[Barry the Quokka|new character]] to observe the personalities and interactions of the main cast from a third-party perspective.<ref name="Kot"/>

One of the core members of the team was Michal Shafrir, a software engineer and ''Sonic'' fan, who made sure the development went as planned. The DreamGear minigames were made by Greg Batha, who was the lead developer of the game. The lead artist was [[Min Ho Kim]], who had previously worked in ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island]]''. Various members at Sega and [[Sonic Team]] also helped playtest ''The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog'', with [[Kazuyuki Hoshino]], [[Yui Karasuno]] and [[Yuji Uekawa]] reviewing the art style so it could be fitting for the franchise.<ref name="Thread"/>