Over the previous couple of weeks, my mates and I’ve been collaborating in what has been dubbed “Big Walk Mondays”. Collectively, we’ve taken to the Australian outback-inspired setting of Home Home’s newest journey, and to say it’s been the largest multiplayer shock of 2026 is an understatement.
Huge Stroll is strictly a co-op sport, playable by as few as two gamers and as much as 12 gamers, with proximity chat being an enormous pillar of the sport’s design. With that in thoughts, I reckon many individuals shall be turned off by Huge Stroll, particularly in case you don’t have a devoted squad to play it with. Nevertheless, in a actually cool characteristic, the puzzles and island dynamically scale to your group dimension, so it is not made with one group dimension in thoughts.
In my case, I jumped into the sport with three different mates, and Huge Stroll simply kind of leaves you to it. Spawning right into a hub space, you get some tutorials detailing the way you work together with gadgets and the way you progress your arms, which might be pointed ahead, upwards, and to the facet.
You tackle the type of characters I can solely actually describe as “humorous little guys”. Made up of a number of balls, they’re simply amusing to see transfer round, amped all of the extra by the hilarious method that the nostril throbs as you discuss.
You’re then set unfastened in an open world with no goal – it’s essential to merely discover. This hands-off strategy to Huge Stroll is its best energy. Inside a couple of minutes of leaving the bottom, a construction on the horizon caught our consideration. It was right here we have been capable of customise our look, so we shortly knew who was who.
Then we seen a platform, which had a button on it. When pressed, a field lit up a number of hundred metres away. Somebody needed to keep behind to carry the button, whereas the opposite went to the field. Inside was some form of pear-shaped object, which at this level, we had no thought what to do with.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than we discovered one other platform with a helpful pear-shaped slot, and shortly we understood that we should acquire these to achieve entry to a key. That key then unlocked a bridge which took us to an entire different space.
I’m detailing all of this as a result of that preliminary hour is principally the construction of Huge Stroll. You see one thing, you discover it, it often has some form of puzzle to unlock the pears which then unlock a brand new space.
It’s not telling you the place to go, however the pure design of the atmosphere evokes a seamless sense of discovery. You’re discovering how the sport works in real-time with no textual content tutorials or glowing markers.
That design philosophy is precisely why I ended up loving this sport a lot as a result of not solely does it maintain onto that philosophy by its complete run, it additionally steadily turns into extra advanced as you be taught it.
Within the first few hours, we have been studying to carry buttons on the identical time or make towers of our humorous little guys to achieve high-up objects. A handful of hours later, we have been devising the best way to talk by gesturing when separated by soundproof glass.
The puzzles have such an awesome selection to them. A few of them are all about speaking to one another; others are about bodily coordinating to beat bodily obstacles.
One puzzle noticed us all separated into totally different rooms. All of us may see one image of a four-symbol code, and wanted the others to tell us what the remainder of the sequence was by way of a teleprompter.
The problem was that the particular person within the first room may solely communicate to the particular person within the second room, and so they may solely discuss to the particular person within the third room, and so forth. It sounds easy sufficient now, however in follow we have been continually having to reconvene to debate who was getting it mistaken and the best way to clear up the difficulty.
These are a few of my favorite moments within the sport. Huge Stroll typically forces you to take a second and devise a plan with each other, and it repeatedly results in some hilarious debates. We might typically get into arguments over how an issue ought to be approached and why one particular person’s plan was higher than the others.
That ingenious design to its puzzles is absolutely solidified by the sport’s dedication to immersive mechanics.
As I’ve talked about, proximity chat means you can not communicate to one another from greater than a handful of metres away. There’s a superb use of dynamic spatial audio, the place our instructions or cries for assist realistically react to the house that we’re in. We had little bit of enjoyable once we realised our shouts echoed throughout the valley from a vantage level.
Then there’s the day and evening cycle, which genuinely plunges you into full darkness. If caught within the outback at evening, somebody must bodily carry both the glow-globes which can be dotted across the map, or a torch which might be present in sure areas.
Every merchandise must be carried by an individual, which frequently results in some humorous situations since each merchandise might be kicked away. One time I kicked a key off a tower as a joke, and we spent round quarter-hour scouring the woodlands under searching for it. I shortly realized not to do this once more.
That sense of physicality then feeds into Huge Stroll’s model of development. As you discover, you’ll typically discover instruments like laser pointers, the aforementioned torch, or perhaps a bodily map.
Transporting these to and from puzzles is absolutely your greatest problem, as somebody wants to hold every object. However ultimately, we found that blue constructions sometimes held some form of backpack or utility belt. It felt like a supreme improve once we found a backpack attachment that allowed somebody to hold two pears directly.
You’ll additionally uncover shortcuts again to the bottom, which acts as the place to begin for every session. Steadily, you turn into extra conscious of what every form of construction means, what they will unlock, the place to take them to, and even the best way to traverse house faster as you unlock issues like monorails and ski lifts.
It’s fascinating that the sport by no means tells you something aside from the best way to transfer your arms, but you be taught a lot about it by pure discovery and teamwork. It genuinely began to really feel like “Huge Stroll Mondays” have been a bonding train in addition to a extremely enjoyable puzzler.
My greatest difficulty with the sport was actually right down to efficiency. The sport seems to be fairly good, however typically struggled with a tanking body price, particularly on the bottom PS5. That is much less of a difficulty on the PS5 Professional – though there isn’t official PS5 Professional assist – however you’ll nonetheless get the odd dip in bigger areas. On the time of assessment, the sport has now been out for a month, so it’s disappointing to see that this difficulty nonetheless hasn’t been addressed.