Arabic version: لعبة «بيغ ووك» تعيد إنشاء ويلسونز برومونتوري للعب التعاوني

According to ABC News, Melbourne developer House House has turned Victoria’s Wilsons Promontory into the setting for Big Walk, a co-operative video game built around exploration, puzzles and player communication. The studio behind 2019’s Untitled Goose Game released Big Walk in early August after six years of development.

The game uses a loose 1:20-scale recreation of the national park, with co-founder Jake Strasser saying he hand-placed every rock. House House used lidar scans to create a 3D map of the area, while a research camping trip and on-location recording helped the team capture regional sights and sounds. A sound designer even hit Squeaky Beach with their fists to record the beach’s distinctive noise.

Artist Kalonica Quigley developed 3D models for 80 to 100 native plants. Strasser placed them according to Victoria’s Ecological Vegetation Class system, creating environments including salt marshes, wet eucalyptus forests and dry eucalyptus forests. Co-founder Stuart Gillespie-Cook compared the scattered puzzle rooms to a large outdoor sculpture garden, while the game’s routes are designed to feel less like explicit bushwalking trails.

Big Walk asks players to cooperate through proximity voice chat and, when separated, use gestures, flashlights, laser pointers and other tools for long-distance charades. Its puzzles can require one player to identify a symbol from a mountain and communicate it to another player using a telescope. The approach draws on social games such as charades and Pictionary rather than puzzles that one person can solve alone.

House House began development during COVID lockdowns, when in-game meetings became the team’s way of staying connected. The game arrived as social online multiplayer titles using proximity voice chat have become more prominent. In less than a week, Big Walk had sold more than 1 million copies, exceeding the 400,000 visitors Wilsons Promontory receives each year. Big Walk is out now.