Amid the wave of recent cooperative games, many of which follow a formula built around chaos, jokes, and unpredictable situations between friends, Big Walk emerges as an attempt to do something different. Developed by House House, the studio behind Untitled Goose Game, it offers a relatively short cooperative experience built around exploration, communication, and, above all, teamwork. Instead of making cooperation simply a way to make the game more entertaining, Big Walk makes it the core of the experience.
One of the first things that stands out is its presentation. For a short cooperative game, Big Walk features impressive visuals and a distinctive art direction. More importantly, however, is the way its world is structured. Its open map allows players to separate, get lost, and encounter different situations without necessarily following a predetermined order. Proximity voice chat reinforces this concept: the farther players move from each other, the harder communication becomes, turning something as simple as getting separated from a friend into part of the gameplay.
This freedom is also reflected in the puzzles. Big Walk uses radios, character poses, gestures, and different forms of non-verbal communication to create challenges that cannot be solved through individual logic alone. In many situations, understanding what another player is trying to do is just as important as figuring out the solution to the puzzle itself. The game therefore manages to turn simple actions into situations that require attention and synchronization between players.
Another major strength is its length. Big Walk seems to understand exactly when its formula could start losing its appeal and ends the experience before it becomes exhausting. It is not long enough to make one of the players abandon the journey halfway through, but it is also not short enough to be forgotten a few days later. There is enough time to introduce its mechanics, develop its ideas, and prepare players for what comes at the end.
And it is precisely in the finale that all of these ideas come together. In the final puzzles, fundamental elements of the experience are taken away from the players: colors disappear and communication becomes limited, forcing players to rely much more heavily on the teamwork they developed throughout the journey. The result is an ending that rewards those who made it that far and demonstrates that beneath what initially appears to be a simple and chaotic experience, there was a much deeper idea.
Big Walk manages to create a particularly interesting situation: making someone solve a problem alongside another person without necessarily knowing where they are, what they are doing, or even being able to hear them. Communication stops being merely a tool and becomes the challenge itself.
That is why Big Walk stands out among the so-called “FriendSlop.” The game does not need dozens of hours of content, a complex story, or an endless sequence of funny situations to work. It understands that a good cooperative game should not simply put friends in the same server; it should give them reasons to learn how to play together. And in the end, that may be Big Walk's greatest strength.
