Sega recently hosted its Sonic Central event, dedicated to announcing new Sonic the Hedgehog video games. The presentation ended with a brief teaser trailer for the next main series Sonic the Hedgehog game, set to launch in 2022. An official title wasn't revealed, but Sega itself accidentally leaked the possible title Sonic Rangers, which fans have started to run with. Regardless of whether or not Sonic Rangers ends up being the real title of the game, it seems that a ton of details have already leaked online.
On January 6, 2021, an anonymous 4chan user posted a write-up for a game they supposedly play-tested called Sonic Rangers. As one might imagine, most fans ignored this supposed "leak" at the time as there was no hard proof to back up any of the claims. But now that the name Sonic Rangers has appeared in an official Sega press release (even if that press release was "outdated" as Sega claims), it gives a lot more credibility to the old leak.
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According to the leak, Sonic Rangers is an open world game inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The playtester supposedly played a 20 minute long exploration demo as well as a demo that may have featured the game's final boss. The Sonic Rangers open world will apparently be populated with "enemies, puzzles, and platforming challenges," with players able to purchase new skills for Sonic.
Defeating bosses in Sonic Rangers' open world will get players orbs, which can then be used to enter a dimension called Cyberspace (this seems to be referenced by the Sonic Rangers teaser trailer). In Cyberspace, players complete levels similar to the ones found in Sonic Generations, and by beating them fast enough, they will get Chaos Emeralds. The Chaos Emeralds are used to fight a boss, which was a "gigantic tree robot thing" according to the playtester.
As far as what the playtester thought about the game, they were not impressed. They said that both exploration and combat were "super boring" and described the game as "button mashy." They said that they were able to transform into Super Sonic for the boss fight, but that it too mostly consisted of button mashing. Overall, they acknowledged that the game was clearly early in development but that it was "ROUGH" and "not a fun time."
Before Sonic fans get too upset about this write-up, though, they should keep in mind that the game is in the early stages of development and a lot can change between now and when it hits store shelves. It's also possible that this write-up is inaccurate, so fans should keep that in mind as well. For now, Sonic the Hedgehog fans should wait for some more official information from Sega.
Sonic the Hedgehog is in development for unspecified platforms for release in 2022.