Will we still speak to each other at the end?

Only today have begun playing this with 3 friends, so the scores are provisional and I'll maybe adjust once we've actually finished the walk. Assuming we're still speaking to each other.

Three hours into Big Walk and I have learned two things about my friends. One, they are capable of genuine brilliance under pressure. Two, not one of them can be trusted to hold onto a walkie talkie for longer than four minutes.

Big Walk is the new game from House House (the studio best known for making a goose into a war criminal and keeping my children interested in watching me play a video game). It's a cooperative adventure for two to twelve players set on a big handcrafted island, and there is no solo mode. None. You either round up some mates or you don't play - there is no matchmaking. There's something quite refreshing about a game that looks you in the eye and says "no, go and get your friends."

Proximity Chat Is the Whole Game

I want to be really clear about this bit, because it's the reason Big Walk works at all.

The proximity chat isn't a novelty feature bolted on to encourage silliness. It's the actual mechanic. Voices fade as you drift apart, muffle through walls, echo down corridors and crackle when they come through a walkie talkie. Wander off over a hill and your mates genuinely disappear from earshot. Step behind something solid and they're gone entirely.

Which means every puzzle immediately becomes a communication problem. You're not solving a riddle so much as trying to describe a shape to someone who cannot see you, cannot hear you properly, and has already wandered off in the wrong direction because they got distracted by a rock.

Half of Big Walk is puzzle design. The other half is discovering how badly your friends describe things.

The toolset leans into it beautifully. Walkie talkies, binoculars, laser pointers, megaphones, flares. There are whiteboards. There is a cowbell. We used the laser pointer for ten minutes to annoy each other, because we are adults.

It Is Not Going to Win a Beauty Contest

Right, let's be honest, because that's the point of these things.

Big Walk is not a looker, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise. It's flat, simple and a bit plasticky in places, and if you came here for texture detail and lighting you're going to be sorely disappointed. I understand the argument that it looks 'charming', but sat next to almost anything else released this year it looks decidedly undercooked.

Does it matter? Not really, and that's the odd part. The island reads clearly at distance, which turns out to be exactly what a game about pointing at faraway things needs. Function over fireworks. I still wish it looked nicer.

The sound design, mind you, is superb. It's doing the heavy lifting here and it knows it.

Three Hours of Friendship Stress Testing

What I hadn't anticipated was the sheer emotional range packed into a single session.

We've had a proper disagreement about which direction to head in, conducted at increasing volume. We've had a moment of genuinely lovely teamwork where four people worked on figuring out lights, using just gestures and vibes. We've had annoyance, mostly aimed at whoever keeps walking out of earshot mid sentence. And we've had joy, the loud, unrepeatable kind you get when a plan you'd all written off suddenly comes together.

None of it was scripted. That's the trick. House House built a machine for generating stories about your own group, then got out of the way.

It helps enormously that you cannot die and failed puzzles just reset. There's no punishment for being an idiot, which is exactly what you want when three of you are being idiots simultaneously.

Where We're At

Three hours in, we've cracked a handful of puzzles, unlocked our first bits of progress and are currently arguing about where we shoud go next. A full run apparently takes somewhere in the region of ten to twenty hours, so we've barely started our big walk.

Early impressions? This is one of the most enjoyable co-op experiences I've had in ages, I think the last time was probably 'It Takes Two'. The pacing is patient and there are lulls, so if you want constant stimulation you may bounce off it. If you've got two or three people who'll actually commit to a session, though, get on it.

Full review to follow once we've reached the end. Assuming we ever agree on a direction.

What's Working

• Proximity chat that genuinely reshapes how you solve problems

• Puzzles that scale to your group and make everyone feel useful

• Outstanding sound design carrying the whole experience

• No death, no punishment, endless retries

• A tool cupboard full of glorious nonsense

• Generates its own stories without ever forcing them

What's Grating

• Visuals are functional

• Getting three or more people with children to have enough time is its own puzzle

• The patient pacing occasionally tips over into dawdling

• No solo option, so you're at the mercy of everyone else's schedule