Summary
The whole experience of Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club almost feels like playing through an interactive Peanuts movie, which fans will probably love! I can definitely see kids who enjoy the movies having a blast running around town as Snoopy, collecting hidden treasures, and solving cases!
Developer – Cradle Games
Publisher – GameMill Entertainment
Platforms – Nintendo Switch (Reviewed), Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Review copy given by the Publisher
Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club, developed by Cradle Games, is a kid-friendly detective game where you play as the beloved Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang. You work together to solve mysteries and investigations around a fully explorable town. What starts as a simple case to figure out what happened to Snoopy’s food quickly turns into a multi-step investigation into everyone’s problems.
The gameplay loop is very straightforward, as this game is clearly made for small children. Each case begins with a short cutscene that sets up the details and goals of the investigation. From there, you explore the town using the initial clues to find more leads and evidence. Usually, when you collect a piece of evidence, another child in town gives you a task to help them out before you can move on to the next step.
Most of these side investigations involve unlocking and using a new costume for Snoopy. Each costume gives him a new tool or ability. For example, Detective Snoopy can see hidden footprints to follow suspects, Pirate Snoopy can use a metal detector to find buried treasure, and there are a total of X costumes to collect. Once you’ve unlocked them all, you can explore the entire town freely and find all sorts of hidden items like Comic Panels and Woodstock and his friends.
Altogether, there are four chapters in the story, each taking about 1–2 hours to complete. The game also includes replayable minigames introduced throughout the story. These are simple distractions that help break up the fetch-quest-heavy gameplay. Some of the minigames include a Simon Says-style button-matching game that gets more complex, a memory card match game, and a football field goal kick game that requires timed button presses. Completing these minigames earns you lollipops, which are used to retry the final step of each case.
The graphics on the Nintendo Switch are decent, but the game doesn’t seem to fully utilize the system’s specifications. There are several sections where the visual quality noticeably dips. However, the game runs smoothly, and the characters and the town look just like their comic counterparts. I played this on the Nintendo Switch 2, and it was fully compatible.
Every character is fully voice-acted, which feels like a rare treat these days, and they sound great. The whole experience almost feels like playing through an interactive Peanuts movie, which fans will likely enjoy. I can definitely see kids who love the movies having a great time running around town as Snoopy, collecting hidden treasures and solving cases.
However, one major concern is the price. For 4 to 5 hours of gameplay, spending $40 to $50 (depending on the version) feels a bit steep.
