Big Walk review – larking around with mates elevated to an artform
Switch 2, PlayStation 5, PC; House House
The creators of Untitled Goose Game return with an online, open-world adventure that delivers slapstick silliness and bucolic majesty in nearly equal measure
Radiant sunsets glinting on lapping waves; bushland valleys that beckon with secrets; modernist buildings sat atop craggy ridges: Big Walk’s setting is as arresting as it is beguiling – a kind of architectural fever dream transplanted to a handsome Australian wilderness – but it is the images created by players that lodge deepest in the mind. Here’s one that has stuck with me: in the black of night, cicadas kicking up an almighty din, I had lost my partner. Panic. Despair. Fear. Then, there in the far distance, I saw him signalling in my direction. He was relentlessly spamming a gigantic, ball-shaped lamp on and off, the ground around him flicking from inky dark to warm pastel pink and back again, like a single Christmas light blinking from afar.
This kind of encounter is common in Big Walk, the brilliant and whimsical new online co-op puzzler from House House, the Melbourne-based studio behind the 2019 viral hit, Untitled Goose Game. Rather than playing as a honking, mischief-making goose as you do in that game, you are a bug-eyed, gangly limbed kind of bird person (think Pingu as drawn by Mondrian) for whom getting separated from your mates is all part of the fun. That’s somewhat because this rugged terrain is dense with vegetation and cliffs to fall down, and also because the game makes ingenious use of proximity and direction-based voice audio. Step out of earshot of your party and you will find it difficult to call for one another (unless, of course, you’ve picked up a Fisher-Price-like walkie-talkie).
So you and up to 12 players step out into this somewhat eerily photorealistic open world to uncover its mysteries. Quickly, you come across challenges which veer from the straightforward to the brain-scrambling: shoot the aforementioned ball-shaped lamp into a hoop; arrange wooden pegs decorated with odd, nature-themed symbols into some kind of shape. For each successfully completed task, you win what looks like a large red peanut. Get enough of these red peanuts and you score a key which in turn unlocks some important piece of infrastructure: for example, a slow-moving, toy-like train whose parping horns are a joy to obnoxiously blare across the otherwise bucolic landscape.
This structure naturally sustains its own rhythm: moments of intense cooperative concentration followed by longer stretches of ambulatory downtime. Such is the layout of this world, you end up doing a lot of backtracking. This is when a little of the game’s quirky lustre wears off since the actual walking is the least interesting part of Big Walk (and you’re also liable to get stuck on bits of rock). Frustration builds as you traipse through the same patch of scrub for the umpteenth time.
Still, Big Walk’s less action-packed moments can be gratifying in their own way: I never tired of watching the twinkling night sky segue with impossible speed into the warm, orange glow of a new day, or stopping to enjoy the sounds of a softly gurgling creak.
The beauty of Big Walk lies in how it tasks you with working together, conversing verbally and physically, to access its most enchanting sights. It stands out in an era when so much of online communication, be that in video games or on social media, has been distorted by a kind of attention-holding logic – for instance, the serotonin-releasing kerching of notifications or the relentless rewards of levelling up. Yet Big Walk eschews these pernicious aspects of digital life for a gentler, less overbearing experience that seems expressly designed to foster enriching connections and childlike playfulness.
Here’s another moment that has stuck with me: wiping away tears of laughter after my brother and I clumsily dropped one of those essential red peanuts to the bottom of the devilishly constructed, practically “masocore” 100ft shaft that we had painstakingly platformed our way out of. We nattered about it until we found the next thing that piqued our interest: wobbly rave tunes blaring from deep inside the belly of a mountain. I shan’t say any more: you and your pals will want to discover these delights for yourselves.
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