11 Essential Big Walk Beginner Tips for a Successful Trek

Big Walk is a brilliant, cooperative adventure fundamentally about learning to communicate with your friends through various unconventional means to solve intricate environmental puzzles. You will be exploring a massive, sprawling island heavily littered with colorful structures, strange landscapes, and unique tools designed to help you on your long trek.

Because the game thrives on mystery and discovery, there are quite a few mechanics and features the game intentionally does not tell you right away. To ensure your adventure is as smooth as possible, we have compiled a comprehensive list of strategies. Below, we outline 11 crucial Big Walk beginner tips to help you cross those daunting mountains and successfully collect every red gourd along the way.

Gather Your Entire Squad

Big Walk shines as one of the most engaging multiplayer cooperative games available, supporting massive lobbies of up to 12 players. The beautiful part of the game’s design is that the puzzles automatically scale and adjust based on the number of players in your session (capping the difficulty adjustments at four players). However, you absolutely cannot play Big Walk solo. You need at least one other person. For the best narrative and gameplay experience, try to keep the exact same core group of players together from your very first session all the way to the end credits.

Walking is Always a Viable Option

Once you cross the red pathway out of the starting zone, the world opens up, allowing you to tackle the puzzle towers in any order you choose. It is incredibly common to look at a distant peak and assume you are completely stuck until you unlock a specific ski lift or train network. You don’t! The game’s geometry allows you to walk practically anywhere. While clearing towers to reactivate transportation networks makes traveling much faster, never be afraid to just hike to your destination on foot.

Understand Your Inventory Limitations

As you progress, you will unlock handy items like backpacks and waist bags to help you carry extra gear. However, there is a massive catch: you cannot physically put items into your own bags, nor can you take them out. You rely entirely on your friends to manage your stored inventory. Furthermore, if you are carrying a walkie-talkie on your hip or back, you will be able to hear incoming messages, but you cannot speak into it. You must hold it in your hands to broadcast.

Don’t Fear the Disconnect: Your Gear is Safe

If your group has been hiking for hours and it is time to take a break, you might panic about losing your hard-earned backpacks, specialized tools, or precious red gourds. Do not worry. As long as an item is physically fastened to your character’s body or held securely in your hands when you log off, it will safely reappear in a neat pile right at the starting area when you boot up your next session.

Read the Island’s Architecture

The island is filled with strange, colorful structures, and paying close attention to their visual design is one of the best Big Walk beginner tips we can offer. While every puzzle is unique, building shapes often dictate the type of rewards hidden inside. For example, massive blue spiral-shaped buildings almost always contain vital inventory management upgrades. Learn to recognize these architectural patterns from afar so you can prioritize your trekking routes effectively.

Beware of Gravity and Dropped Gear

Thankfully, Big Walk does not feature lethal fall damage. However, taking a nasty tumble from a high ledge will leave your character stunned for a few seconds, forcing you to drop whatever item you are currently holding in your hands. While items strapped to your back remain safe, a dropped laser pointer on a steep, grassy slope can easily roll away and be lost forever. If you are quick enough, you can snatch dropped items mid-roll, but it is always safer to unequip valuable tools before attempting a risky jump.

Master the Realistic Proximity Chat

If you are used to the generous proximity voice chat found in most modern multiplayer games, you need to adjust your expectations. Big Walk utilizes highly realistic, directional audio. If you are walking a few paces behind your friend and they are talking while facing away from you, their voice will be heavily muffled. To communicate clearly, you must get physically closer to your teammates or ensure you are actually facing each other when speaking.

Avoid Third-Party Voice Apps

Because the proximity chat is so sensitive, it can be incredibly tempting to just mute the game and hop into a Discord voice channel. Do not do this! Many of the game’s best puzzles and mechanics are specifically designed around purposeful, hushed communication and getting separated from your group. Bypassing the in-game audio ruins the exact experience the developers painstakingly crafted.

Leave a Trail of Light

As you explore the island, you will frequently stumble upon small, fruit-like lightbulbs resting on pedestals, alongside various light switches attached to puzzle structures. Always take a moment to turn these on, even if it requires a slight detour. While they won’t illuminate the environment enough to completely replace your flashlight at night, they act as brilliant visual markers. When you eventually climb a high tower and look down, these glowing lights will clearly map out exactly where you have already been.

Get Creative with Multipurpose Tools

The game provides a variety of gadgets, and while their primary uses are obvious—flashlights for the dark, radios for music, and laser pointers for indicating puzzle objects—they have secondary utilities. Getting lost is a constant threat in Big Walk. You can easily use the radio’s loud music as an audio beacon for lost teammates, or repeatedly click your flashlight on and off to signal Morse code or simple “yes/no” answers across vast ravines.

Jump Your Way to Victory

The terrain of the island is highly irregular, littered with small rocks, roots, and steep grassy inclines. Walking normally will frequently get you stuck on minuscule pieces of geometry. The absolute fastest and most efficient way to travel—especially when moving uphill—is to constantly jump. Spamming the jump button allows you to effortlessly glide over bumpy terrain. Just make sure your friends are also utilizing this platforming trick, or you will accidentally leave them in the dust!