Big Walk Review: Communication, Puzzles, Laughter

As a big lover of single-player games and an equally big hater of the term ‘friendslop’, it took me a while to warm up to the hugely popular genre. Even as hits like REPO, Peak, RV There Yet began to take over the world, I was hesitant to give them a chance. Then Big Walk came along. From the creators of Untitled Goose Game, this experience is something truly special.

Given developer House House’s pedigree, Big Walk was calling my name long before I embodied my weird little bug-like ‘dude’ and sauntered awkwardly into the game’s playground-based tutorial.

You begin by setting up a world for a group of anywhere from two to 12 players, and then watching (and hearing) as those friends become ant-like noodle dudes nearby. You’re warned off the bat that Big Walk is meant to be enjoyed separately from one another regardless of who you’re playing with, that you’re not supposed to be able to see your friends’ screens or communicate in real life, and what results is what’s sure to be a Discord friend night friendslop hit.

Two Big Walk characters taking a mirror selfie while one holds a puzzle item.

‘Dude’ is what me and my partner immediately began to call the bug creatures you play as. So if you see ‘Dude’ at all throughout the rest of this review, you know what I’m on about.

Proximity Chat Puzzle-Solving

Big Walk comes with an unusual request: no voice calls and no shoulder-to-shoulder couch co-op. There is nothing but proximity chat and vague gestures to solve puzzles in Big Walk, since part of the challenge in a good chunk of them is finding a way to communicate with one another when words are not an option. You’ll need to plan ahead when setting off for an expedition to a puzzle and stick together as much as the game allows. If you need to get your point across when your cohort is out of proximity chat range, you’ll need to get creative.

I got caught up in admiring the views as my partner and I walked to the first puzzle that, by the time I asked a question and got no response, I realized we’d been separated. Alone in the forest, my dude looked around in the setting sun, with only ambient game noise and the echo of my confused calls of, “… Babe?” in my headphones. Trying not to panic, I walked in circles around the rock that split us up, thinking aloud and hoping he’d hear until a loud noise cut me off. There was a button back where we’d started our jaunt that shot a rocket into the sky – we’d fired it just because it looked funny, but now it had become a precious landmark to rely upon. I backtracked, found the launcher, and sure enough, there he was.

Using the text chat in Big Walk to tell a player you miss them.

This kind of creative communication will be key to your enjoyment of Big Walk. The game constantly engineers stories like that. Your dudes can do a handful of things physically as well to convey their messages without vocalizing them – punching the air with either fist or extending an arm to the side, for instance – which you’ll need to do often as you enjoy your Big Walk together.

Nothing has a label or name, either, so it’s all up to you to figure out what things are and how to communicate that with your group when the time comes. In addition to our ‘dudes,’ my partner and I took to calling the items you solve puzzles to earn ‘gourds,’ and we’d typically celebrate successful solutions with arms that rose and lowered quickly, violent headbanging, and plenty of high-fives or dancing. The puzzles themselves are enjoyable, but watching your group slowly build its own language is the real reward.

Little Direction, Big Plans

When you spend so much time simply exploring a game’s world, it’s important for it to be nice to spend your time there, and Big Walk delivers in spades. The world is just as full of scenic spots to hang out as it is puzzles to solve once you get to wherever you’re going. The destination is always fairly clear, and you won’t find yourself prohibitively stuck. There’s never any kind of rush to get moving. Your group moves at its own pace, limited only by your problem-solving skills.

A sunset view in Big Walk.

Thinking outside the box will be just as important as thinking inside it when it comes to solving puzzles, especially since your characters are primarily limited to bringing along what they can carry in their hands or kick across the island. You’ll find something early on that seems out of place, only to discover nearby that it’s the key to a puzzle you didn’t know you’d need to solve. Deciding what to bring and where to bring it is just as critical as actually knowing what to do with it.

Along the way, Big Walk has all the beauty of a fairly open world that rewards curiosity. While plenty of the puzzles are housed in conspicuous ways, once you learn that most of the out-of-place structures on the island host one, half the fun is stumbling upon something curious and investigating it just because you want to. Time slips away as you and your group trek on into the beautiful Australian Outback-inspired world full of delightful puzzles and cartoonish perils.

House House eases you in, though, spawning dudes into a playground with visual instructions on how to move before testing you with a few introductory puzzles outside and allowing you access to everything else. Once you’ve entered the world of Big Walk proper, from there, everything is left to your group to decide. Where do you want to go next? What kind of puzzles can you see from wherever you are that might beckon you across the wilderness to come try to solve? Who’s bringing what when you go?

Learning to control your character in the playground in Big Walk.

There’s a delightful kind of chaos in trying to coordinate what to do as you work together, and there’s definite merit to playing in groups of varying sizes, too. The world changes slightly depending on how many people are playing, but rest assured that you’ll always have the exact number of characters to do what you need.

For example, in the introductory area, you’ll find a construction crane with a button at the very top. Since you’re meant to pick each other up and jump to hit the button, the crane’s height changes depending on how many people are in your game.

While small groups are better for crowd management, since some puzzles seem easy to overwhelm with too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen, there’s also plenty of opportunity for group games. Big Walk made for an excellent date-night game with my partner, but I can already picture the wonderfully disorganized mess it’ll become during a Discord game night.

I’m truly excited to keep taking my Big Walks – no matter the off-putting name of the friendslop genre, this game is what you make it, and I believe each group that plays will make it their own unique kind of wonderful.