Big Walk is a co-op only online game about hanging out with friends and solving puzzles. Given we are currently living through peak friendslop thanks to the likes of Peak, RV There Yet?, R.E.P.O. and Content Warning, it was probably inevitable that Big Walk would attract that coinage too.
But does Big Walk deserve it? Does any game deserve it? “I love that there is a word out there to help people categorize games that are good for groups of friends to play together, and that it recognizes that the friends are the important part! It’s a useful concept imo,” wrote House House’s Nico Disseldorp in a new Reddit AMA.
Still. The “slop” part of it isn’t super appealing, despite a lot of people using it in a joking and affectionate way. “Personally I’d prefer the second word wasn’t ‘slop’ because it’s a term with so much baggage (like AI slop) and I think these games are so thoughtfully made,” Disseldorp went on.
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“But artists always hate the genre names used to describe their work, so it’s nothing new.”
The House House team also touched on the real world inspiration for Big Walk’s environment. There are heaps of game studios in Australia but they rarely make games explicitly set in their home country. House House’s Big Walk isn’t strictly set in Australia either, but it definitely looks a lot like the Australian bush. The greens are dry and slightly muted. Gum trees, or trees looking very much like gum trees, are rife. When I watch gameplay footage of Big Walk I can smell the dry eucalyptus.
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It turns out that’s because Big Walk’s world is based on a real world national park in Victoria, in the country’s south west. House House’s Jake Strasser revealed as much. “The game world is directly based on Wilsons Promontory National Park in south-east Victoria,” he wrote.
“All the plants in the game are native to the Prom, as well as the iconic granite. The topography of the island is also based directly on the Prom—we started with a LIDAR heightmap of the real place, and then started sculpting and accentuating landforms from there. We also live just a few hours drive away! So we could literally go to the place to get inspired, take photos for textures, record all the atmos etc etc.”
In his Big Walk review, Christopher Livingston avoided using the term friendslop entirely, calling it “a joyous jaunt through a gentle world full of thoughtfully-designed puzzles.”