Most games want to put their best foot forward by placing the parts with the most to do and the most content at the forefront. Big Walk is the newest game from House House, the team behind Untitled Goose Game, and it does something completely different. Instead of putting the focus on the wonderful co-operative puzzles, the title refers to the gaps in between, the natural intermissions between tightly designed challenges. With this approach, it hooked me thanks to the fun puzzles and great multiplayer mechanics.
Where You’re Walking
Big Walk is a multiplayer game that hosts anywhere from two to twelve players, forcing them to work together to make it through the island. For my review, I played the two-player version. The game eases you in with a restrictive first section that guides the group to a station that requires collecting four objects to progress.
Each object is locked behind a puzzle that requires co-operation through signals, actions, and speech, until you bring all the objects back to gain a key. The key unlocks the way forward, and Big Walk has set you up for the rest of the game, as you can now explore a massive island at your own pace. Despite the route opening up and giving you options in every direction, the structure remains the same as the first section. You’ll find a tower with a key in it, then set about completing puzzles until you get that key, which unlocks a new traversal method.
The island itself is bigger than it seems at first, despite what the more streamlined tutorial area would have you believe. I didn’t realize quite how big it was until we found a dedicated map room, which serves well as a hub. The spawn room remains the same throughout the game, which initially scared me with the extra walking it might demand as objectives got further away. Those fears were dashed by Dark Souls-style gate opening, bringing us back to the beginning after one of our long walks. It perfectly hit that note of “oh, we’re back here” with surprise and relief in equal measure.
There is a very small hint of a story that alludes to what is truly happening on the island. A huge ball at land’s end provides an imposing presence in the distance, beyond a large wall. There is a singular cutscene, though only one player gets to see it, and I was not the lucky one in our playthrough. Again, it encourages communication amongst the team, but I can’t help but feel as though I missed out. However, even without traditional storytelling, the environment can communicate the conflict between Big Walk‘s environment and the construction that covers it. Story isn’t the main point, and I couldn’t get a handle on the literal goings on, but it hardly felt essential to the experience.
Walking and Puzzling
Whenever that natural scenery is broken up by the solid primary colors of man-made structures, it means a puzzle is up ahead. There are many, many puzzles scattered around, more than are necessary to complete the game. When we had no clue what to do, we could go elsewhere. Around the next corner would be another opportunity to progress. There is an endgame option if you want the challenge of taking on all the puzzles, but the amount needed to reach the end is a perfect balance of requiring most of them without forcing you to waste time on something which isn’t working.
Puzzles have wonderful variety, many of them using the same building blocks in different ways. The open world doesn’t prevent escalation either. Challenges farther from the starting point can be more complex even if they can’t be put in a specific order. Without using words, the vast majority managed to easily communicate intent, though a few remain mysteries to me to this day. Then, it’s just about achieving those goals. Pattern recognition, memorization, item-throwing, a little platforming, finding things, aural skills, communication both verbal and non-verbal, are all tested by Big Walk.
One of my favorites involved navigating an obstacle course while effectively blindfolded, guided by my teammate. Others put us in soundproofed rooms, requiring us to use the game’s gesture system to tell one another the buttons to press. Even some that may sound like cop-outs, like the ‘puzzle’ which simply required waiting for five minutes, came as a refreshing shake-up and a chance to have a conversation with a friend. However, of course, there were a few misses: having to get an object all the way up a series of platforms, involving climbing the same staircase many times over.
The deviation from the difficulty trend is the endgame, its own section with its own specific challenge. The whole area has a unique atmosphere, even including musical accompaniment which is missing from most of the game. It helps enhance the contrast between the natural and the unnatural, creating a wall not only between you and your partner, but also between you and the whole outside world. I found the whole endgame area riveting, with the epilogue afterwards eliciting all the right emotions.
That said, for a game called Big Walk, the walking itself is the weakest element. Limited inventory, especially early on, means much of the time will be spent walking back and forth to towers. The towers are often on top of hills, which is useful for locating them, but makes reaching them even more tedious. Hills are also covered in stony surfaces. The small rocks catch the player, stopping you for a second until you jump, while larger ones are obstacles to go around. A path is always there, though what looks like the way forward can be nothing of the sort, as inclines that are too steep prevent the player from jumping. Traveling to new areas had novelty, but returning to a tower with our spoils several times over was tiring.
The progression is all about finding ways to skip walking, be that the train system, the ski lifts, or the tunnel system of shortcuts. They are quicker and safer than walking, making it more difficult to lose your way. However, while faster, they are not fast. The game has a ‘sleep’ state when the player hasn’t moved for a while, where their eyes slowly close. It does nothing to disguise the interminable waiting for one of the three trains to make their way around the island. They need to be slow to allow players to board, though the presence of a brake but no acceleration is head-scratching.
More progression comes in the form of inventory upgrades and items. Finding a backpack was a very exciting upgrade, doubling the amount that can be carried at any time. A backpack goes on the back, meaning a partner is necessary to put things on or take things off, keeping co-operation the focus even outside the designated puzzles. These tools never appear in the puzzles themselves; instead, they are used to find your way around the open world. Lights in particular were necessary during the nighttime of a quite short day-night cycle.
Again, it added frustration to my journey with how it limited visibility. On the other hand, it adds value to the light switches found on every man-made structure, marking the completed ones and acting as beacons. Still, in spite of these shortcomings, I think the game still succeeded at what it set out to do: create a satisfying experience best enjoyed with friends.
The End of the Road
Big Walk is a game that clearly communicates itself from the title: there is walking, and it takes place on a big island. However, those aren’t the parts of the game that sold me on it. Instead, the puzzles designed around working together in so many different ways are what made me enjoy spending time with the game. Regular unlocks help create a sense of progression as the map and new ways around it unfold, leading up to an excellent final gauntlet. My time with the game wasn’t without its boredom and frustration. Still, I came away remembering the moments of satisfaction at figuring something out and the joyous feeling evoked by the ending.
Disclaimer: Panic provided a PC (Steam) copy of Big Walk for review purposes.
