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

In the three years since Big Walk was first announced, the gaming community has struggled to categorize it neatly. Some have called it a co-op walking simulator, others a puzzle-adventure game, and still others have lovingly dubbed it “friendslop.” After spending more than twenty hours exploring its Australian Outback-inspired world, one thing becomes abundantly clear: Big Walk defies easy definition because it genuinely doesn’t resemble anything else on the market. By inventively stripping down the medium to its most essential components, developer House House—the creative minds behind the viral sensation Untitled Goose Game—has crafted an experience that invites both gaming novices and seasoned veterans to build understanding from the ground up, painting in the colors of a mysterious world alongside their closest friends and family members.

A Fresh Take on Cooperative Gaming

Big Walk is fundamentally a game about walking and talking with friends, experienced from a first-person perspective and designed for groups ranging from two to twelve players. Players embody charmingly abstract characters—imagine multicolored snowmen with elongated noses and noodly, expressive appendages—as they trek across a vast, open island hunting for nameless MacGuffins through an abundance of cleverly designed cooperative puzzles. This intentionally minimalist setup conceals remarkable depth that reveals itself the more time players invest in exploring the handcrafted world. Unlike procedurally generated experiences such as Peak, with which Big Walk has often been compared, every inch of this island feels meticulously intentional, from switchbacks down mountainsides that offer tantalizing glimpses of distant landmarks to scattered radio stations playing unique songs that players can carry along on their journey.

The game’s opening sequence serves as both tutorial and introduction to its unique design philosophy. Players convene in a starting area resembling a colorful playground or children’s gymnasium, filled with buttons to push, vibrant bouncy objects to kick and throw, and climbable surfaces that teach the fundamental mechanics. Here, groups learn the gesture system, discover how proximity chat becomes a crucial tool, and understand the physics that govern this whimsical world. The first four puzzles guide players through a limited section of the island before unlocking virtually the entire remaining landmass at once, giving groups complete freedom to chart their own course through the adventure.

Accessibility Meets Depth

One of Big Walk’s most impressive achievements lies in how it scales its challenges based on group size. The host maintains save data across sessions, allowing players to join or depart as needed, while different versions of puzzles exist for parties of two, three, or four-plus players. Some puzzles become easier with more minds working together, while others descend into glorious chaos—imagine a basketball-style challenge where a dozen players inadvertently knock each other’s shots away from the goal until someone takes charge and establishes a turn order. This flexibility means families with young children can enjoy the experience just as thoroughly as groups of experienced gamers seeking a fresh cooperative challenge.

The visual language established at the game’s outset carries throughout the entire experience with remarkable clarity. Big Walk contains no quest markers, on-screen prompts, stamina bars, or health meters. Every element exists diegetically within the world, and every discovery feels genuinely earned. There’s no exposition dump explaining who these strange walklings are or why they’re solving puzzles on an otherwise uninhabited island. Instead, House House trusts each friend group to carve out their own adventure, letting natural curiosity guide exploration while shared learning accumulates hour after hour. This approach encourages groups to develop their own vocabulary and traditions—one family might call the MacGuffins “eggy things” due to their shape, while another might develop entirely different terminology and rituals.

Communication as Core Gameplay

The game’s most ingenious design decisions revolve around how it manipulates communication between players. Some puzzles demand close collaboration with precisely timed actions, while others require the group to split up across great distances, making reunification its own rewarding challenge. Many puzzles deliberately inhibit communication—one memorable example locks a player behind soundproof glass, forcing them to relay critical information to teammates who cannot hear them directly. The game returns to approximately six to eight core concepts throughout its runtime, but each iteration introduces clever new complications that keep the experience feeling fresh. In one particularly devilish puzzle, a player must wear a blinding helmet while teammates guide them through an obstacle course using only vocal directions. Hours later, this same helmet returns with additional rules requiring the wearer to transport specific objects to designated locations, demanding the group first identify the correct objects before verbal navigation can even begin.

The proximity chat system deserves special recognition as the invisible thread binding the entire experience together. Without using Big Walk’s built-in voice chat, players would essentially disable the game’s magic entirely. Using external communication tools like Discord or Steam chat would circumvent the intentional friction that makes many puzzles work, functioning essentially as a cheat code that undermines the experience. This self-policing requirement shares DNA with other cooperative games, but here the stakes feel higher because so much of Big Walk’s brilliance depends on that carefully calibrated communication dynamic. Playing a horror game with the lights on might still be enjoyable, but you’d be preventing it from reaching its full potential—the same principle applies here.

A Journey Worth Taking Together

Big Walk features a defined endpoint and isn’t designed for endless play, though experiencing it with different friend groups does offer renewed appeal. Between sessions, players find themselves discussing puzzles that stumped them or theorizing about mysterious elements like the massive black orb visible beyond an initially inaccessible wall. The game provides few words, instead offering players an enormous canvas on which to create shared stories together. Major rewards unlock progressively—a train that circumnavigates the island, a map room for plotting travels—while totally missable shortcuts reinforce that triumphs belong to the players who discover them organically rather than following waypoint markers. Inventory limitations require cooperation even for basic tasks; accessing items stored in your backpack demands a friend’s assistance to remove it, reinforcing the game’s central philosophy of bringing people closer together.

House House conceived Big Walk during the COVID pandemic, seeking to create something that would generate meaningful human connection and genuine conversation. The result feels almost therapeutic in its design—a digital space where collaboration isn’t just encouraged but absolutely essential, where success comes not from individual skill but from collective problem-solving and invented communication systems. The game’s final stretch masterfully synthesizes everything players have learned, daring them to recall their entire journey and apply every technique they’ve developed. The concluding scene delivers a surprisingly bittersweet emotional payload that left at least one reviewer misty-eyed, proving that even without traditional narrative, games can deliver profound emotional experiences through pure design and shared experience.