Paul’s an expert in Videogames, Star Trek, flannel shirts – in that order.
Published:
Verdict
Big Walk is a triumph. It’s a wonderful exercise in hanging out with your mates and getting those grey cells working at the same time, all wrapped up in a quirky and beautiful environment. It facilitates conversation, slapstick, and having a bit of a sit-down in between things.
I was on the receiving end of so many expletives playing Big Walk, and if I’m super honest with myself, I probably deserved them all. Getting lost isn’t something I make a habit of, or even something I do on purpose, but it happened with enough regularity that I’ll forgive the accusations.
Big Walk is a bit like Myst by way of Peak, with The Witness shouting instructions from across the room – it’s an open-world co-op adventure game where you and yours solve puzzles to gain access to more parts of an island, more equipment, and more ways to mess things up.
The Untitled Goose Game lot certainly don’t pigeonhole themselves; the developer has jumped from an isometric adventure game about harassing the local populace of a village to a super ambitious open-world puzzler that hinges on communication. The whiplash-inducing change of genre hasn’t affected anything, though – Big Walk is so good.
Big Walk is so good in a way that was initially difficult to put into words. It’s a game that gives you and your friends the tools to mess up, to be victorious, and to feel really, really clever. The instructions are sparse, but the design is so spot-on that things come naturally, making me feel like a super genius in the process.
The basics of Big Walk are just that – pretty basic. I can sprint, jump, and move my arms in different directions. I can pick up objects and turn them on or off, and that’s about it. This is enough. This facilitates the dozens of puzzles dotted around the map, all of which we need to solve to receive what we dubbed a jelly baby – small knobbly objects that unlock a tower, and subsequently, another means by which to travel around the island.
Although a lot of these puzzles were variations on a theme, no two of them were the same. We had to stand on each other’s shoulders to dunk a basketball; we had to try to mime instructions to our friend separated by soundproof glass; we had to speak through a one-way telecom system and try not to fly off the handle when someone didn’t know what a ‘Y’ looked like.
Communication – the attempt at clear and concise communication, that is – is the key to a lot of what Big Walk does. There is proximity chat that allows us to speak to each other when close, but it starts to drift the further away we get, as it should. Sometimes not being able to talk is the puzzle. Like the world’s most frustrating game of Charades, describing what two very specific lines look like without the other person being able to see is more difficult than it sounds.
The tech behind how Big Walk sounds is fascinating, and the puzzle game riffs on that in so many different ways. Environment and distance are key to whether and how well we can hear the other person chatting – voices echo in caverns, feel suppressed when inside, and talking over the radio has a very satisfying bzzz.
I can’t really do anything on my own, to the point where if there’s an item stored on my back, I can’t even see it, let alone access it. I panicked when I thought we had left the jelly baby somewhere along the path more times than I’d care to admit, only to be told it’s been on my back the entire time.
Stepping out onto the island, we’re given no overt direction other than forward. We keep barrelling forward in whatever direction feels right at the time, always with something to aim for. The environment itself is beautiful; a borderline tropical paradise that could potentially be at odds with the eyesore of the primary colour blocks that denote a puzzle.
The pops of color peek out through the treeline and catch the eye at a distance, and while we got lost on a few occasions, it wasn’t long before a destination was in sight. I thrust my arms out and yell to the group that there’s a big blue swirly thing ahead. We must see it up close.
I don’t want to talk too much about what I saw or what my group and I did, because I want you to see and do those same things. The sense of discovery and the feeling of figuring things out is so gratifying, and the bits in between of just sitting, waiting out the night, talking about nothing – it’s truly wonderful.
Big Walk is the best thing I’ve played this year. The spectacle, the sounds, the true feeling of adventure – it’s a superb vehicle for having a laugh and feeling pretty smug when you figure out something your mates don’t. Rope in as many people as you can and don’t you dare use Discord.
