While Snoopy sleeps atop his doghouse, the player is pulled into his dreams about his alter ego, the “World Famous WWI Flying Ace.” As they pass by the sleeping beagle, the rest of the Peanuts characters are woven into his dream, hence the game’s plot. Lucy Van Pelt takes over as leader of the Allied forces, Linus and Sally play intelligence officers, and poor Charlie Brown is hired as a janitor in an Allied airbase. After Charlie Brown is abducted by the Red Baron’s minions, along with the designs for a secret weapon that could change the direction of the war, the plot picks up speed. Snoopy and Woodstock travel to the sky on his trusty Sopwith Camel to recover the plans and save Snoopy’s unhappy owner.
The principles of the game revolve around the third-person action-adventure flight in settings such as airborne racing, dogfighting missions, and planet exploration. Collectible goods found across the environment enable plane and weapon upgrades and new character/plane combinations for use in versus multiplayer aerial warfare. Hardcore Peanuts fans will identify the Verdun front lines, Montsec woodlands, and Verdon Gorge as the settings for Snoopy’s early Flying Ace escapades in Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip. The game includes seven places, frequently changing from mission to mission.
Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel and the other planes in the game have a flight model that leans firmly towards the whimsical arcade end of the realism spectrum. Although complex stunts like barrel rolls and Immelmans are accessible through button combos for veteran air combat fans, controls and collision are forgiving and approachable for younger players. The game offers boss sequences that provide fresh takes on the game’s main principles. For example, as Woodstock, players will face a swarm of submarines while being pulled behind Snoopy’s plane in a toy balsa-wood glider. The mechanics are similar to those of a rail shooter, with Snoopy dragging the player along a route while the player fights a multi-stage boss.
Pre-rendered cut scenes advance the narrative between missions as the player returns to a “hub world” represented by Charlie Brown’s neighborhood. At Pig-Pen’s Shop, the player can upgrade his plane and armaments or complete a series of tutorials at Marcie’s Flight School. The music and voiceovers in these segments are reminiscent of the legendary Peanuts Christmas specials, a staple of American television since 1965.
