When I arrive to meet with the tiny team at Melbourne game developer House House, they’re sitting in a circle under a eucalyptus tree. After introductions, the five of us set off into the scrub. Over the course of our hike we take a train to the beach, huddle on deck chairs in the sand dunes and climb a mountain as the sun rises.
All without ever leaving our desks. Welcome to the world of Big Walk: House House’s new game after the runaway global success Untitled Goose Game, which saw millions fall in love with being a naughty goose rampaging through a bucolic village. After Untitled Goose Game’s overwhelming success, House House wanted their next game to be very different and “unusual”.
Despite this, Big Walk has been an immediate success, with more than 1m downloads in the first week of release. In Big Walk, your only goal is to go on a walk through sprawling bushland, solving puzzles with friends. At the centre of the game’s design is a proximity voice chat, which means you can talk clearly to someone who is right beside you but can’t hear each other when you’re separated.
As we board the puttering train that winds across the game’s map, the House House team tells me how Big Walk began: during Covid lockdowns, when they started playing games online with international friends. This group was the first to test a very early version of Big Walk. The two had a “level of ambition” that became integral to the game; while telling me about this, the train we’re on goes through a tunnel and our voices change, echoing in the confined space.
Beyond the chunky stick figure characters, the world of Big Walk is remarkably realistic. Although they initially considered the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic as a setting, they were drawn closer to home – specifically Wilsons Promontory, a few hours south of Melbourne. They would brainstorm in the mornings and go on walks in the afternoon.
Strasser and Quigley took reference photos of plants and the sound team flew out to do field recordings. Jumping off the train, we head to a secluded spot by a beach. We collect deckchairs from the surrounding bush and arrange them in a circle.
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