“What’s closer to the essence of game, of playing as a concept: a sequel derived from action cinema about the paternal dilemmas […] or a translation to the digital scope of a universal school game like hide and seek?” wrote my friend Ira in his great text about Meccha Chameleon. After the jump to 3D, co-op games had pretty much been abandoned by developers in favor of single-player and multiplayer experiences, and when they came back they were more focused in translating a normal single player experience into a co-op games, with that cinematic focus clearly present, but they were never about building friendship through in-game interactions or finding ways to translate your friendship into a playable experience. Why did it take so long to make a game recreating what it is to spend a weekend in the mountain with your friends?
In Big Walk, solving puzzles is not the goal but the excuse to keep the adventure going, to express yourselves, to have fun. Through walking, exploring and problem solving you build internal codes between the group, in the form of gestures and movement, that end up being the key to completing the final dungeon of the game. Getting rid of any visual difference between players and verbal form of communication, it puts those codes, that friendship, to the test with a succession of puzzles in which the only way to communicate is by moving, turning, jumping, crouching and moving your arms. After that final stretch, the only thing left is to say goodbye before each player walks twoards the light at the end of the tunnel. One of the best endings in the medium.