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Over the last few weeks, my friends and I have been taking part in what has been dubbed “Big Walk Mondays”. Together, we’ve taken to the Australian outback-inspired setting of House House’s latest adventure, and to say it’s been the biggest multiplayer surprise of 2026 is an understatement.

Big Walk is strictly a co-op game, playable by as few as two players and up to 12 players, with proximity chat being a huge pillar of the game’s design. With that in mind, I reckon many people will be turned off by Big Walk, especially if you don’t have a dedicated squad to play it with. However, in a really cool feature, the puzzles and island dynamically scale to your group size, so it isn't made with one group size in mind.

In my case, I jumped into the game with three other friends, and Big Walk just sort of leaves you to it. Spawning into a hub area, you get some tutorials detailing how you interact with items and how you move your arms, which can be pointed forward, upwards, and to the side.

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You take on the form of characters I can only really describe as “funny little guys”. Made up of several balls, they are just amusing to see move around, amped all the more by the hilarious way that the nose throbs as you talk.

You’re then set loose in an open world with no objective – you must simply explore. This hands-off approach to Big Walk is its greatest strength. Within a few minutes of leaving the base, a structure on the horizon caught our attention. It was here we were able to customise our appearance, so we quickly knew who was who.

Then we noticed a platform, which had a button on it. When pressed, a box lit up a few hundred metres away. Someone had to stay behind to hold the button, while the other went to the box. Inside was some kind of pear-shaped object, which at this point, we had no idea what to do with.

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It wasn’t long before we found another platform with a handy pear-shaped slot, and quickly we understood that we must collect these to gain access to a key. That key then unlocked a bridge which took us to a whole other area.

I’m detailing all of this because that initial hour is basically the structure of Big Walk. You see something, you explore it, it usually has some kind of puzzle to unlock the pears which then unlock a new area.

It’s not telling you where to go, but the natural design of the environment evokes a seamless sense of discovery. You’re discovering how the game works in real-time with no text tutorials or glowing markers.

That design philosophy is exactly why I ended up loving this game so much because not only does it hold onto that philosophy through its entire run, it also steadily becomes more complex as you learn it.

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In the first few hours, we were learning to hold buttons at the same time or make towers of our funny little guys to reach high-up objects. A handful of hours later, we were devising how to communicate through gesturing when separated by soundproof glass.

The puzzles have such a great variety to them. Some of them are all about talking to each other; others are about physically coordinating to overcome physical obstacles.

One puzzle saw us all separated into different rooms. We all could see one symbol of a four-symbol code, and needed the others to inform us what the rest of the sequence was via a teleprompter.

The issue was that the person in the first room could only speak to the person in the second room, and they could only talk to the person in the third room, and so on. It sounds simple enough now, but in practice we were constantly having to reconvene to discuss who was getting it wrong and how to solve the issue.

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Those are some of my favourite moments in the game. Big Walk often forces you to take a moment and devise a plan with one another, and it regularly leads to some hilarious debates. We would often get into arguments over how a problem should be approached and why one person’s plan was better than the others.

That ingenious design to its puzzles is really solidified by the game’s commitment to immersive mechanics.

As I’ve mentioned, proximity chat means you cannot speak to each other from more than a handful of metres away. There’s a brilliant use of dynamic spatial audio, where our commands or cries for help realistically react to the space that we’re in. We had a good bit of fun when we realised our shouts echoed across the valley from a vantage point.

Then there is the day and night cycle, which genuinely plunges you into complete darkness. If stuck in the outback at night, someone needs to physically carry either the glow-globes that are dotted around the map, or a torch which can be found in certain locations.

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Each item needs to be carried by a person, which often leads to some funny scenarios since every item can be kicked away. One time I kicked a key off a tower as a joke, and we spent around 15 minutes scouring the woodlands below looking for it. I quickly learned not to do that again.

That sense of physicality then feeds into Big Walk’s version of progression. As you explore, you’ll often find tools like laser pointers, the aforementioned torch, or even a physical map.

Transporting these to and from puzzles is really your biggest challenge, as someone needs to carry each object. But eventually, we discovered that blue structures typically held some kind of backpack or utility belt. It felt like a supreme upgrade when we discovered a backpack attachment that allowed someone to carry two pears at once.

You’ll also discover shortcuts back to the base, which acts as the starting point for each session. Steadily, you become more aware of what each kind of structure means, what they can unlock, where to take them to, and even how to traverse space quicker as you unlock things like monorails and ski lifts.

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It’s fascinating that the game never tells you anything other than how to move your arms, yet you learn so much about it through natural discovery and teamwork. It genuinely started to feel like “Big Walk Mondays” were a bonding exercise as well as a really fun puzzler.

My biggest issue with the game was really down to performance. The game looks quite nice, but often struggled with a tanking frame rate, especially on the base PS5. This is less of an issue on the PS5 Pro – even though there isn’t official PS5 Pro support – but you’ll still get the odd dip in larger areas. At the time of review, the game has now been out for a month, so it’s disappointing to see that this issue still hasn’t been addressed.

Conclusion

Big Walk is a quiet yet genius co-op experience. It sets you up with a fun interactive team-based system and just leaves you to uncover its wonders. The sense of discovery is palpable, and I was often blown away by the game's sense of scale and how it implemented progression in a seamless yet meaningful way. If you and your mates are looking for your next co-op fix, this is something special and unlike anything else out there.