Big Walk Is One Of The Best Co-Op Games Ever

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In the three years since Big Walk was announced, I've heard it referred to as a co-op walking sim, a puzzle-adventure game, and friendslop. After spending 20+ hours in the world of the Australian Outback-inspired game, it's no easier to succinctly define it, because it's not actually like anything else. By inventively stripping down the medium to its most essential parts, it invites novices and experts alike to build it back up from scratch, coloring in its mysterious world with their friends by their side. We need a new word for whatever kind of game Big Walk really is, but here's one for now: unforgettable. Big Walk is a game about walking and talking with friends, played in first-person for groups of 2-12 players. Embodying vaguely humanoid characters--think multicolored snowmen with long noses and noodly appendages--you and your friends will trek across a vast and open island, hunting down nameless MacGuffins by way of solving an abundance of inventive puzzles together. This intentionally basic setup belies the depth you'll discover the more time you spend on its island. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWfg9iLq55c&pp=0gcJCaMLAYcqIYzv Before you head off, you'll convene in a starting area that looks a bit like a playground or a children's gym, full of buttons to push; vibrant, sometimes bouncy objects to pick up and kick; and climbable surfaces. It's here where you'll learn most everything you need to know about what you can do, like all the gestures you can make with your body, how to use proximity chat to your aid, and how to deal with the physics of the world. For example, you may note how falling a great distance doesn't mean taking fall damage, but it may mean you drop what you were holding and lose it in a forest until the sun comes up. The first four puzzles act as a tutorial. In a more limited section of the island, you'll seek them out deep in the woods, high atop hills, or along beaches, work together to solve them, and unlock their corresponding MacGuffins, then place them in a console that unlocks virtually the entire rest of the island all at once. From there, it's your group's call to make, and your path through the world won't be the same as any other. Unlike Peak, which the game has often been compared to, Big Walk's island is handcrafted, not randomly generated, and it shows. Every inch of the world feels intentional, from the switchbacks down the mountainsides meant to give you the hint of a far-off landmark, to the radio stations you can come across, each of them playing their own special song that you can carry with you if you're in the mood for some music on your journey. Because there are so many puzzles, sometimes you'll even take aspects of one puzzle to solve others, and the game offers clever environmental hints when this is required. In small ways, puzzles change depending on your group size. The host maintains the save data across sessions, allowing players to join or drop when they may need to, but different versions of the island exist for parties of two, three, or four-plus, with slight tweaks to each puzzle to accommodate the number of people in a group. No matter your team size, Big Walk adjusts to give you an appropriate challenge. Some puzzles will be a bit easier with more people putting their heads together, while others will be much more chaotic; one of the first puzzles my group found was basically a basketball hoop with big bouncy lights as the ball, and if you don't easily tame a group of a dozen players, you'll all be knocking each other's shots away from the basket until someone takes command and establishes a turn order. There's a remarkable clarity to the visual language in Big Walk that's conveyed right at the start, but everything else there is to know about it is built on a foundation you make together with your friends, establishing your own vocabulary and body language in such an effortlessly cool, intuitive way that so many other games seem afraid of. Playing with two of my kids, we took to calling the dozens of MacGuffins "eggy things" because of their somewhat egg-like shape, and we called our characters "walklings." As the hazy semblance of a story unfolded, we made sense of it in our own words. Big Walk clearly hopes each group does this. That's why it fills its world with fundamental video game objects and objectives, like puzzles and their rewards, but adds nothing definitive beyond that. Big Walk's world speaks for itself. There are no quest markers or on-screen prompts, and no stamina or health bars to manage. Every aspect of the game is diegetic, and every discovery is of your own making. There's no lore dump or explainer as to who you are or why you're solving puzzles on an island that only your group seems to inhabit. Across its realistic-looking landscape are many more cartoonishly colored structures of all shapes and sizes that stick out by contrast, and developer House House trusts each friend group to carve out their own adventure through

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Published

August 3, 2026