Is Big Walk Worth It?

The score

PC Gamer's review (Christopher Livingston, published 2026-08-12) gave Big Walk 90/100, with the verdict: “A joyous jaunt through a gentle world full of thoughtfully-designed puzzles.” The review is based on roughly a dozen hours of co-op play with a small group of friends.

What reviewers praised

The reviewer's central point is that Big Walk teaches players to communicate without words. The same gesture — arms waved overhead — ends up meaning different things depending on context: “wrong,” “correct,” “I found something,” or just “hooray.” Groups naturally develop their own shorthand as they solve more puzzles together, and the review calls this the game's real achievement — not any individual puzzle, but the communication language a group invents along the way.

The tone also gets called out specifically: no death, no jump scares, no monsters, and no pressure to do anything except explore at your own pace. The worst that happens if something goes wrong is a brief stumble off a cliff or losing track of a walkie-talkie.

What to know before you start

• You can only hold one item in your hands at a time, and gear like backpacks needs a friend to help you put on or retrieve from.
• Proximity voice chat only reaches roughly a dozen yards — past that, you need a walkie-talkie.
• Puzzle mechanics get reused and remixed throughout the game rather than each puzzle being entirely new, which the review frames as a strength once you notice how the twists build on what you've already learned.

What IGN's review says

IGN (Nicole Carpenter) scored Big Walk 9/10, calling it “a rewarding co-op adventure full of beautiful emergent moments as you find solutions to cleverly built puzzles and explore its vast open world with your friends.” The review frames communication itself as the puzzle: you're dropped into the world with no stated objective, and proximity voice chat — muffled behind walls, echoing in tunnels, silent once you wander too far apart — pushes your group to invent its own shorthand.

IGN's playthrough (a core group of three, with others dropping in and out) ran to nearly 20 hours across several sessions. One puzzle example the review highlights: one player wears a blindfold-like obstruction and has to be talked through an obstacle course by teammates shouting directions — the kind of design IGN calls typical of how Big Walk turns limitations into its best moments.

Who this is for

Since Big Walk has no single-player mode and no matchmaking (see the solo play & matchmaking guide), it's built for a group who already plans to play together — the review is explicit that the experience depends on having people to communicate with, not on any one player's skill. If you're deciding whether to buy, check the platforms guide for where it's available and the price guide for what it costs.