I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a better online social space for myself and my closest friends than this game.
Mechanically, this is a very simple game. The entire game is built around in-game communication. The proximity voice chat is very deliberately limited, and the corresponding text chat also has the same limitation as the voice chat, where you can’t “hear” someone’s chat messages if you aren’t close to them. There are a lot of tools to communicate beyond voice though. You can leave messages on signs, you can raise your arms, point them forward or sideways, or just flail them wildly. You can flash lights, or use laser pointers, or walkie talkies, or if you get really lost, you can make your way to one of the game’s many signal flares and fire one of those to let your group know where you are.
There are puzzles that put your party’s communication skills and improvisation to the test, where you have to figure out a solution between yourselves before splitting up into two rooms to execute on your plan. Maybe that involves showing things through soundproof glass, or using arm motions, or using tools provided to you in the puzzle.
But ultimately, that is not why I fell deeply in love with this game. I love this game because of the company I brought with me.
As so much of Big Walk is the downtime and travelling between the puzzles, the true joy comes from the people with you. I had my partner and my three closest friends with me. We all have our own issues and insecurities. We have had a lot of tension between us recently, and I brought the people I love together into this charming world to help release some of that tension and mend some of the bridges between us.
Big Walk is a game about spending time together with your friends in a physical space, where we can interact with each other, and where proximity and our ability to communicate are always something we have to pay attention to. We were having to constantly pay attention to the people around us, making sure we could all hear each other, or in some cases that we wouldn’t be overheard. We had to make sure to keep an eye on the people behind us in the group just in case they fell behind out of earshot, or worse, got lost entirely. While it may have been a little awkward at first, a few of us have had very little contact recently prior to our game sessions, we all eventually warmed back up again and things started to flow easier between us.
There were also moments where we all got seperated, sometimes by design, sometimes by accident. Times where some of us needed to sit at a button, and others have to go find the box it connects to, or where some of us have to go into a soundproof room for a puzzle.
Where me and my partner can walk through the bush together and talk about our real life stresses and responsibilities.
Where me and my anxious friend can sit together on a chair lift and talk about her insecurities and help her ease her mind.
Where my lil fox friend on her weaker laptop accidentally clips through the train and falls down a ravine, and I jump down with a light to save her and help bring her back to the rest of the group in the dead of night.
Where me and my more inappropriate friend can deliberately fall back behind the group and talk about the most filthy smut on the internet together for a laugh.
This game really moved me, and served to amplify my love and appreciate the people closest to me in my life. And despite the thousands of miles of ocean seperating us all, for a few hours a night on the weekends, we can be together in a way far more intimate and real than just sitting in a voice chat or playing Tabletop Simulator.
I genuinely do think this game is one of the best experiences of the last few years, and I really do recommend it for everyone.
When this post goes live, two of my friends will be visiting us in person, after long 10+ hour flights half way across the world. And while I love and cherish them, and am really really enjoying the little time we are together in person, my only regret is that we don’t have enough seperate rooms to play Big Walk with them while they are here (light hearted). At least we will have something to look forward to after our very own Big Goodbye.
To Lilla, nim, Lucy, and Skye. I love you all, so dearly. Thank you for being on this adventure with me.
Big Walk requires at least two players to play, as every puzzle cannot be completed alone. At the start of the session, the host selects the minimum number of players (2/3/4+) that they expect during the session, and puzzles will be modified to require that many players to complete. This game does work cross-platform.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1478500 £15.99 (per player)
Switch 2: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-2-games/Big-Walk-3132961.html £15.99 (per player)
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