When developer House House first announced their follow-up to the viral sensation Untitled Goose Game, few could have accurately predicted the sheer scale of their ambition. Now that Big Walk has officially launched across all major platforms, the critical reception has been nothing short of staggering. But among the perfect scores and glowing praise flooding social media today, a specific, highly prestigious comparison keeps popping up across the gaming press: critics are repeatedly comparing this indie title to Nintendo’s defining open-world masterpiece, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
According to major outlets like The Verge and syndicated reports on MSN, the game offers a cooperative experience that evokes the exact same sense of wonder, systemic freedom, and discovery as exploring a ruined Hyrule. But how does a cooperative “walker-talker” about hanging out in the Australian bushland earn a legitimate comparison to one of the most acclaimed action-RPGs of all time? The answer lies in its absolute refusal to hold the player’s hand, and its brilliant reliance on in-game communication tools like the newly detailed megaphone.
A World Built on Curiosity, Not Waypoints
The defining characteristic of Breath of the Wild was how it completely stripped away the cluttered UI markers, mini-maps, and exhausting objective lists that had plagued open-world game design for over a decade. It simply dropped you into a massive, gorgeous world and asked you to look at the horizon, find a weird landmark, and walk toward it to see what happens.
Big Walk takes this exact design philosophy and applies it to a multiplayer setting. Set on a sprawling, meticulously handcrafted island heavily inspired by the real-world Wilsons Promontory National Park in Australia, the game features absolutely zero traditional navigation aids. There is no GPS overlay, no glowing breadcrumb trails on the ground, and no floating arrows pointing you toward the next puzzle sequence.
Instead, the world design itself guides you. You and your friends (ranging from intimate groups of 2 up to a chaotic expedition of 12) must rely entirely on visual landmarks. A strangely shaped rock formation, a distant radio tower, or a specific clearing in the dense brush serve as your only compass. This design choice turns the simple act of navigating from point A to point B into a collaborative, high-stakes puzzle. As we discussed in our feature Why Getting Lost is the Heart of the Adventure, accidentally wandering off the designated path is not a failure state; it is where the actual game begins.
Systems-Driven Sandbox Mechanics
Another massive reason for the BotW comparisons is the systems-driven nature of the world. In Zelda, players manipulate fire, wind, and physics to solve puzzles in completely emergent, often hilarious ways. In Big Walk, the core system you are manipulating is not fire—it is sound.
The game utilizes a highly advanced proximity voice chat system that fundamentally alters how you play. Voices naturally fade over distance, become muffled behind solid objects, and echo loudly down long cave corridors. This means that if your group of 12 players scatters in different directions to scout an area, you will legitimately lose contact with them. You cannot simply press a button to highlight your teammates’ silhouettes through walls, and party chat is disabled. If you lose sight of your friend, you have to use your actual voice—shouting their name into the microphone and listening carefully for a faint reply bouncing off the terrain.
To navigate this acoustic sandbox, players must scavenge for physical, in-game tools rather than unlocking arbitrary abilities in a skill tree. You can read a broad overview of these items in our Tools Overview Guide. However, one tool in particular perfectly encapsulates the game’s emergent puzzle-solving brilliance: the Megaphone.
The Megaphone: A Tactical Masterclass in Design
According to a launch day guide published by Polygon, the Megaphone is one of the most critical items your group can acquire during your adventure. Because the proximity chat realistically requires you to be physically close to hear normal conversation, coordinating a large 12-player group across a massive valley is nearly impossible without help.
This is where the Megaphone comes into play, acting as a vital piece of the puzzle sandbox. By locating and equipping this item, a player can mechanically project their voice over vast distances. It is not simply a flat volume boost applied to your microphone; the game’s audio engine physically projects a sound cone across the environment, allowing it to reach players far away, completely changing the dynamic of the expedition.
Imagine your group is trying to solve a cryptic environmental puzzle that requires players to be stationed at three different landmarks simultaneously. Without a Megaphone, you are forced to use walkie-talkies (which have their own limitations and require one-to-one frequency tuning) or rely on a chain of players yelling messages to one another like a frantic game of telephone. But if the designated “leader” climbs to a high vantage point with a Megaphone, they can oversee the entire operation, shouting distinct commands down into the valley below.
However, because the game’s audio is entirely physics-based, using a Megaphone indiscriminately can also cause chaotic echoes, drowning out local conversations or confusing other players who cannot pinpoint where the booming voice is originating from. It is a brilliant, tactile mechanic that forces players to think carefully about how and when they communicate.
Scaling from Intimate to Chaotic
What truly solidifies Big Walk as an evolutionary step in open-world game design is how the world seamlessly responds to your group size. The game dynamically adjusts its challenges depending on whether you are playing with a tight-knit duo or a maximum lobby, ensuring that the puzzle-solving never feels trivial or impossible.
Playing with two people feels like a quiet, contemplative hiking simulator reminiscent of the more desolate, peaceful moments of exploring Hyrule. You stick close together, sharing tools and quietly observing the environment. But boot up a 12-player lobby, and the game transforms into a chaotic, hilarious, and loud expedition. Trying to keep a dozen people focused on a single objective without a UI waypoint is a herculean task, and the resulting chaos is entirely by design.
If you are looking for an experience that respects your intelligence, demands genuine cooperation over reflex shooting, and drops you into a beautiful, mysterious world with nothing but your voice and a few gadgets, Big Walk is exactly what you have been waiting for. Be sure to check our Co-Op Tips Guide to ensure your group survives the first night, and prepare to embark on the best multiplayer adventure of the year.