I Love How Differently Folks Are Dealing With This Weird Big Walk Puzzle

While playing Big Walk last night with Chris and Nicole, we were talking about how challenging it might be to write guides for the game’s puzzles. Not because the puzzles themselves are hard to describe, but because what you call them might be so personal to your group that it would be hard to explain to a reader which one you’re talking about. I’ve seen some people call the puzzle I want to talk about here the game’s “simplest,” which I think is technically fair, but rather than making it forgettable, that simplicity is what makes it unique. 

Spoilers follow for one ofBig Walk’s puzzles. Since you might encounter it at any time, I don’t even know how to warn you about it! It’s a house with a timer. Proceed at your own risk.

There’s a puzzle in Big Walkthat’s a small red room with high ceilings, and there’s some furniture in it. There are also some buttons and a big digital timer on the wall. When you hit the buttons, you’re locked in the room while the timer counts down from five minutes. 

Players have dealt with this moment differently. Restart’s players initially thought the room was going to kill them, a possibility that didn’t even occur to my group–it was obvious to us almost immediately that you simply have to wait the timer out. While the folks at PCGamer went stir-crazy waiting, we had a chill time. We sat on the couches and chatted, messing around with our gestures while talking about how we’d been finding the game so far. I’ve been sick this week, so I ran to get more tissues and water, and others took the chance to do some real life stuff too. When the timer got to zero, the puzzle released its bean, and we were on our way.

As other folks have noted, it’s an unusual puzzle, since unlike all the others it doesn’t require you to really doanything. But it also really highlights Big Walk’s core themes of communication and togetherness. Where other puzzles get their challenge from impeding your communication, putting soundproof walls or vast space between you and your group, this one gets its challenge from making communication the easiest it can be. There’s no way to walk out of the short range of the game’s proximity chat; you can’t wander off mid-conversation and get separated from your group. After however many hours you’ve played of striving to communicate, or of looking for moments where you can’tcommunicate because that’s what rewards you with in-game progress, this puzzle takes all those barriers away. You just have to sit there and confront yourself and your group, with none of the distractions of the game’s open world or a puzzle’s tasks.

Big Walkdeveloper House House has said they were inspired to create the game after suffering through terrible Zoom calls during the start of covid, and that they made a prototype to create “a space where we can meet with our friends.” The whole game, then, is about meeting up with those friends, screwing around and doing things together. It’s not always frictionless; solving problems together can be stressful, and everyone in my group has definitely had one moment of exasperation or another when something went wrong or someone (usually me) didn’t understand what the group intended to do. 

This timer puzzle could exacerbate those tensions, if you’ve found it a moment when patience is wearing thin. It could also give you a break from that tension, letting you go AFK without the fear of being left behind. Or, as it did in our group, it could be a lovely little moment of respite, a forced chance to pause and take stock. That reaction might have come more naturally to us than other players because we’re games journalists who are playing Big Walkwith an eye toward writing about it, so being locked in the room was a good chance to share our analysis and take some notes. But the puzzle also inherently fosters reflection, stripping away the rest of the gameplay and focusing your attention right on the game’s main theme. 

In light of this, people have been doing interesting things with the room. I was charmed to see that Restart filmed a talk show in it, very cleverly called “Big Talk.” The developers shared some reflections on the game’s audio in it as well. These kinds of moments could technically happen anywhere in the game outside of the other puzzles–most of your gameplay time is spent trekking around shooting the shit. But I don’t think a talk show or developer thoughts would hit the same if they happened on a beach or the top of a mountain. Besides the layout of the room itself inviting conversation and the couches making the talk show idea practically write itself, the being locked in is what makes the moment work. 

Big Walk is out today! We’ve been SO lucky to get to work with @househouse.com on it, what an incredibly special experience.

Here are some of @emaudible.bsky.social and @nicholaszhangaudio.bsky.social highlights that came up in one of our play tests, on working on the sound for the last 5 years 🔴🟡🔵

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— A Shell in the Pit (@ashellinthepit.com) August 4, 2026 at 11:59 AM

There are so many distractions in Big Walk, and so many moments where everything goes to shit. For instance, in our gameplay session last night, no sooner had we unlocked a feature we’d been striving toward and were setting off toward a much-anticipated goal than I jumped off something at the wrong time. I didn’t just fall; I slid down a mountain that felt endless, screaming as I ended up god-knows-where and turning our triumphant moment of progress into a search-and-rescue mission. All this would be funny in a talk show or YouTube clip, sure, but it would make the moment about the game’s humor, rather than the connections fostered by the ways it plays with communication. The timer room forces you to stop and really look at what’s going on under the surface, both in the game and in the dynamics of your group.

So it’s no surprise that it’s led to some lovely moments and creations, or that it’s driven some players crazy. It has an intimacy I’ve seldom seen in multiplayer games, something Big Walkdoes well but that can be easy to lose track of among the game’s activities. It can be a moving puzzle if you let it be, bringing your group closer together, or just a chance to run to the bathroom and prepare yourself for more adventures.