Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club

As someone who doesn't quite feel like they've got the detective brain for a Blue Prince, and a recent admirer of Snoopy thanks to a partner who has introduced that adorable beagle into my life and home, Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club seemed somewhat of a no-brainer. A quaint, smooth puzzle adventure with Snoopy donning some incredibly cute outfits and bringing along some more of the Peanuts gang to solve mysteries with.

There's a certain atmosphere that you expect with anything Peanuts-related. A sense that your biggest troubles are far away, and you've got all the time in the world to make mischief with your friends. The essence of childhood, if you will, and Cradle Games has captured Snoopy perfectly here. The visuals are reminiscent of the comic strips and bring the characters to a 3D look without making them weird as we've seen in cartoon games of the past. Snoopy is as cute as ever, and there's just an overall aura of peace in the setting, story, and characters of Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club. For the few hours it has a hold of you, there are very little troubles. If it were aimed at an older audience, that might be a point of criticism for a puzzler, but the family friendly ease of the mechanics work to Snoopy's benefit.

The dialogue and overall storytelling are filled with traditional Peanuts charm. It doesn't feel like a random game has just had Snoopy assets slapped on top of it, and your adventures would slot right in alongside the movies, cartoons, and comics. There's not really a central mystery for Snoopy to solve, but rather a few distinct cases which require some assistance from Charlie Brown and friends as you explore the surrounding town, recruiting more assistants and helping out friends as you go. As your playable character, Snoopy does the vast majority of the work, swapping to different costumes you unlock to help you access more of the map and hidden treasures.

Aside from solving the simple cases put before you, there are also minigames that try and add a bit more weight to this game's rather slim playtime. As with the puzzles, most of these activities are very simple, requiring a couple of button presses. There are some timing requirements that might be a snag for the youngest of gamers, but otherwise again there's nothing to stop you from becoming the town's football, baseball, and soap box champion in record time. There are few ego boosts like absolutely monstering a children's game.

The main mysteries in Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club take on a rather formulaic approach, with you completing tasks until you've gathered enough evidence to return to Charlie Brown's sister Sally and piece together your solution. The third and fourth chapters of the game stand out as being more memorable, as the first two really feel like they pad themselves out. The story takes an approach of adding more rather than seeing the mystery twist and turn in other directions. Oh, Franklin needs help with his soap box car, does he? Well he can get lost actually, as I'm busy with something entirely different right now. Pigpen can do one too, as I'm sick of that smelly fella dropping stuff all over the place. Perhaps if Snoopy spoke like that he could get things done in his idyllic little town.

Instead, we're thrown all over the place in blatant attempts to pad out the game's runtime. You'll spend a few hours with Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club, which isn't necessarily an issue, but the time getting new content feels shrunk by a need to have us run back and forth across town in a fetch quest that actually gets us no closer to our goal. It feels somewhat trite to complain about the pacing of a children's game, but there are some really tight chapters and moments later on that make me wonder why we couldn't get a few more, shorter mysteries. Do we need an hour to know that a kite that blew into the forest could be near a tree?

What also surprised me somewhat was at the end of Chapter 4, when I was told if I solved the mystery with Sally, I would no longer be able to go back into town and look for collectibles, as the game considered itself completed. What? I understand once you've solved the mystery there's not much of a need to go through a game like Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club again, but players who want every comic strip or to just spend more time in the world doing extra activities will have to hold off on completing the main story so they can do any last bit of side content. The world would likely be bare without any main goal pushing you forward, but it's not like the world ends when we wrap up the final mystery. Nothing happens in a narrative sense that changes the world state, so you'd expect to just continue as normal if you wish. Turns out that's not the case.

Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club succeeds in immersing you in the world of Peanuts and adding some light-hearted fun to your gaming library, but while it might have got the atmosphere right and will be a fun adventure for younger fans, it's unlikely to impress the young at heart unless they're playing with younger family members. A certain pick up if you like Snoopy, but a very simple puzzler at its core that remains a very short adventure even with padding attempts thrown in. Still, it manages to succeed on charm alone, and for that it ekes its way to our rating.