Sonic’s Chao Garden Resurrected In Adorable & Nostalgic Fan Game

A Sonic The Hedgehog fan has used Dreams to recreate the adorable Chao Garden from the Sonic Adventure games. A surprisingly popular side activity in the Dreamcast-era Sonic games involved raising the cute little blue creatures that roamed in these virtual gardens, using various fruits, animals, and power cells collected through the made adventure to increase their stats as they grew and evolved. Players could also have their Chao compete in minigames like races and karate matches against other critters for prizes, and could even take them on the go with them using the Nintendo Game Boy Advance in the GameCube remakes of the Sonic Adventure games.

The Chao Garden feature vanished from Sonic games following 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2, and the Chao themselves have been seeing somewhat less screentime and focus throughout Sonic’s later titles. However, the lovable little creatures have been seeing a comeback in tie-in Sonic media over the past few years, including a wholesome Chao-filled web animation in 2019. This has led fans to start requesting that Sega bring back the old Chao Garden in a future Sonic game like the upcoming Sonic Frontiers.

Reddit user Style-Z has shared a cute video of a Sonic Chao fan game created in Dreams (via GameRant). The game is more or less a modern remake of the old Chao Garden of the Adventure era, with an added feature that lets players take direct control of their Chao and alter its stats based on how they play in real-time. The minigame is part of a larger Dreams-generated Sonic fan game titled Sonic Style, where players can explore as Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles. Players can collect Chaos Drives that they can use to level up their Chao in the Chao Garden – just like in Sonic Adventure 2.

See the post on Reddit here.

As fans wonder if Sega could bring back the Chao Garden and other classic game elements for Sonic Frontiers, many are looking forward to the new release, which was revealed after months of speculation during December’s Game Awards 2021 livestream. Interestingly enough, Frontiers’ lead producer, Sachiko Kawamura, was the Lead Chao Artist on the Sonic Adventure titles – and has stated in the past that the Chao are some of her favorite Sonic characters. She’s far from the only big name in the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise returning to work on Sonic Frontiers, as longtime Sonic comic writer Ian Flynn is penning the game’s story and Adventure-era composer Jun Senoue will lend his talents to the soundtrack.

Players have been using Media Molecule’s Dreams to create fan tributes to classic games since the title released, including a full-blown Sonic PS5 game that some feel surpasses some of Sega’s most recent official efforts. The Chao Garden fan remake is just such a project, serving as a cute throwback to one of the Blue Blur’s most fondly remembered eras and serving as a preview of sorts for what a modern version of the Chao Garden could look like in a future Sonic The Hedgehog title.

Source: Style-Z/Reddit (via Game Rant)

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J. Brodie Shirey
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J. Brodie Shirey is just a simple man trying to make his way in the universe, but aren’t we all? He currently lives in York, Pennsylvania. He is a big comic book, video game, and science fiction fan, and likes writing articles for ScreenRant or scripts for some of his crazy TV show ideas.

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