New Horizons – Sonic Horizons Christmas Demo Impressions (Fan-Game)
The Sonic series is no stranger to high-quality fan-projects. We covered some of them in 2024 and this year continues offering quality experiences outside of the official releases.
An ambitious 3D Sonic fan project, called Sonic Horizons recently released a demo over the holiday season, letting players experience the game’s first level.

What is Sonic Horizons?
Taking major inspiration from recent Sonic games like Sonic Frontiers and Shadow Generations, the small team is aiming to offer a vast open hub to explore, with each of the main zones housed within it.
In 2023, the game’s first major demo was released, letting players sample the main hub area and some more traditional Sonic Adventure-styled levels. Playing that demo, you can feel the team has ambition for the project, taking the ‘core’ of Sonic Frontiers and applying the physics-focused approach some other 3D fan projects like Sonic Utopia explored years earlier.
The team released a new game demo to celebrate the holidays, focused on the traditional speedy levels.
Sonic Horizons – Holiday Demo
The demo contains two levels, an intro level that gets players familiar with the controls and a proper Act 1 for ‘Dimensional Port’. Visually reminiscent of the Sonic Frontiers Cyberspace and the Null Space area of Sonic Forces, Sonic runs through a stunning backdrop, using his iconic moves mastered from prior 3D titles.
His spin-dash, homing, and bounce attacks from the Adventure era games return in full force, alongside newer abilities like Wall Running from Sonic Lost World and switching between rails using LB/L1 and RB/R1. What makes these moves feel better than the earlier Sonic games, is how they work with the momentum.
When you do a homing attack, Sonic keeps his forward momentum, so if you have a lot of speed built up you maintain it. Chaining that with Sonic Mania’s Drop Dash, Sonic builds up insane speeds. In addition, with the homing attack being mapped to a different button (X/Square), Sonic can leverage his air dash ability to maintain momentum.
Sonic’s ability to Wall Run, carried over from Lost World and Frontiers, is utilized well. Sonic easily attaches to a wall, effortlessly running on the side or up a wall. While I have had no issues with how prior games used the ability, being able to Wall Run without the amount of hand-holding Sonic Team typically utilizes to ensure controls don’t break for the player, is awesome here.
Ethereal Beats – Dimension Port Act 1 Theme
No stranger to making Sonic remixes and even some original themes, Silent Dreams offers his work to Sonic Horizons. The Christmas Demo is the first release of the fan project using his work and it’s something else.
Taking heavy inspiration from the style of music many of Sonic Frontiers Cyber Space tracks offered, Act 1 of Dimension Port has an emotionally powerful melody, mixing haunting female vocals with a tight beat and encouraging male vocals.
What makes me love the track so much, is how it maintains the spirit of the best Cyber Space themes from Sonic Frontiers. They are out there, varied musically, and quite different than the usual Sonic bops, but they still have the spirit of the series. A fast beat and a touch of that ‘lets go!’ spirit Sonic always offers, made those songs some of my favorites in the series.
Getting more music of that style is always welcomed.
Closing Thoughts
Being a fan project, a 3D one no less, it’s hard to tell when the full release will be ready. Currently, you can find updates for the project on Sonic Horizon’s GameJolt page. It’s only playable on PC.
I love seeing passionate fans make content in this community, so covering this and other fan projects is always a highlight. Please look forward to future updates on all things Sonic here at Lords of Gaming!