I must admit that I have yet to play Big Walk, the long-awaited game House House made after their phenomenal hit Untitled Goose Game. UGG hit right as COVID was getting underway, when many people were stuck at home during lockdown, and gave them a brilliantly short but funny experience to obsess over, going as far as the pages of The New Yorker. While it’s impossible for Big Walk to reach those stellar honking heights, it’s gotten universal acclaim from the outlets that have covered it, and may actually have longer legs than the Goose, since it’s not over with in a mere hour.
That I haven’t played Big Walk, I should say, isn’t entirely for my own fault. The biggest thing that limits Big Walk’s adoption is the fact that you must have at least two players on-hand to play it, at all. There is no solo mode, and it’d largely miss the point of the game to try it. Beyond that it’s an even better experience with more people: Big Walk supports up to 12. Most of my friends don’t usually play video games together, and the one that usually does play with others is a FPS enthusiast, and not too into a game fundamentally about communication, and getting lost in a wilderness. Throw in the fact that it’s a game starring weird gourd people, and I imagine he might actually get ill if he tried playing it.
Matthw Haughey, founder of Metafilter and owner of the newsletter and blog A Whole Lotta Nothing, has a typically fine piece about the joys of Big Walk. He mentions that the greatest challenge of the game is simply starting it, finding a number of friends who are motivated to try such a quirky experience and can all schedule time to play it together. Fortunately it doesn’t all have to be finished in one session.
I’m itching to try it, maybe some time soon. I’ll be at DragonCon in a week. If any of you are there, maybe we could meet up somewhere and go for a Big Walk?
