Have you gone a taken a Big Walk? .
At least a million people paid money and did, which isn’t a surprise for a multiplayer game like it. But we do need to talk about the rising trend of what the gaming collective has settled to call “friendslop,” and why Big Walk is doing more than what a game that can be described by that started life as a pejorative but had grown to become a diminutive for a multiplayer game designed around proximity chat.
What Is “Friendslop?”
The advent of “friendslop” can be traced from the cottage industry spawns of various multiplayer game, usually played with typical first-person controls, jankily put together (sometimes by cobbling together pre-made assets), where the real fun of its premise being the friends we played with along the way.
Phasmophobia and Lethal Company are two of such trailblazers, where its mechanics of survival horror with the horror being some unknown entity really becomes a sandbox for players to mess around, mess with their friends, roleplay, and express themselves in ways conventional multiplayer games do not allow.
Of note, these games highlighted the power of proximity chat, where players can only hear each other if they are close enough, similar to how we communicate in real life, which opens up a whole different avenue of play when you can’t just yap at each other at any time.
The “slop” in the “friendslop” comes to its level of polish, or rather the lack of. This is such a fire trend that there’s an ongoing rat race in getting a multiplayer game with proximity chat slapped together and released as fast as possible while everyone is gobbling it up en masse. The term predates the use of “AI slop,” a common pejorative these days and I wouldn’t be surprised if the new rise of the word “slop” to describe mediocrity was thanks to us gamers.
But “friendslop” doesn’t carry much of a negative connotation these days, it’s becoming an acceptable genre where cheap games that you can enjoy with a group of four players mess around in games that are an excuse to hang out with the lads, girlies and fellas.
There are less sloppy co-op multiplayer games out there. Of course, the output of Hazelight including It Takes Two, Split Fiction and A Way Out is a bit more higher budget endeavour. And there’s the We Were Here series as well, which has a lot of good puzzle solving that requires back-and-forth between two players. But these examples are strictly two-player experiences, so not quite “friendslop” which usually have a bigger, more conventional player group of at least four players.
(Side note: gamers including the media, creators and regular fans alike are awful and unimaginative when it comes to naming genres—see roguelike, soulslike, and the like—compared to other media enthusiasts like music goers.)
Big Walk is “Friendgourmet”
And that’s where Big Walk comes in. To describe it as mere “friendslop,” while technically correct if we consider that term is now an acceptable genre name for a video game, is a disservice to the amount of brilliant and thoughtful design developer House House has put into making Big Walk as fun as it is.
So may I propose the notion to refer to Big Walk as not “friendslop,” but “friendgourmet.”
Big Walk’s premise is simple: you and and your group of friends go out and explore the map. It’s a big map, filled with beautiful nature that sort of looks realistic, in contrast to the goofy-looking creatures the player characters are. It’s a beautiful map, not necessarily impressive on a graphical point of view, but it has an artisanal quality of its slopes, trees, bushes and rocks being intently placed and positioned to facilitate play and exploration.
You might hear people describe Big Walk as Myst meets Breath Of The Wild, which is bonkers if you only played the first few hours of the game. But you will see that Big Walk is big, and for the most part it is a walking simulator, which is also a terrible genre name, and also had its origins as some pejorative—is there a pattern I’m sensing in this?
But Big Walk isn’t just a walking simulator, it’s a walking simulator with friends. Big difference there, because in this game, you get to talk to each other while you’re walking. House House dub Big Walk as a “walker-talker” which sounds nice and not made out of hatred.
So, you walk in Big Walk, normally (as in there’s no weird walking mechanics) with typical first-person controls. So what’s the sauce here? For one, it’s how Big Walk makes use of the proximity chat. In that it didn’t just implement a proximity chat feature, but also its spirit.
The Spirit Of Proximity Chat And All It Entails
Let me explain: in any multiplayer game, you can pull a list of players who are in the lobby or session you’re on right now. It even displays the in-game name of the player too. You’re always identifiable in most multiplayer games, even if it’s a play session with a bunch of strangers that will likely never cross paths again.
Big Walk trusts the player to get to know each other like real people, who don’t have their username displayed in full view on top of their head. And you better remember how they look like and sound like as well.
With a group of close friends, that should be no problem, but imagine having two different friend groups joining a session? Whether you like it or not, these people will need to interact like you would in real life: say hi, ask their name, remember how they look and sound like. It’s really refreshing that such a dynamic can be replicated in-game. And if you do have a group of close friends, you can do shenanigans still. Have someone joining late? You can have everyone all just make noise in front of the spawn area and give them a “warm welcome.” Or, what if the late joiner sneak up on someone?
Heck, I’ve read anecdotes of a player shared how a friend snuck in their play session pretending to be another friend, with matching colour and all. There’s a lot of fun social interactions that can spawn thanks to Big Walk trusting you that you know your friends and mutuals enough. (You can always lock the session behind a password to stop unwanted people from hopping in.) Though there have been instances of random people joining some people’s private session only to leave immediately, leaving their still, stiff, dead body to the confusement of the players in there.
Now, put together the inconvenience of communication in a wide open world, and you see where Big Walk becomes fun. You can get lost and be out of reach from other players, with no way to find them (there’s no mini-map, there’s no map button to pull up and see where everyone is). You can actually go around occasionally shouting “hello!” or scream for help in hopes someone finds you. And explore far enough and you’ll find ways to communicate at long distances, like a walkie-talkie, or a HAM radio. The first moment of discovering these items when you’re separated is magical, in that now you can comfortably be apart and still at be in reach.
And the players don’t need to be seperated at a distance to start confronting with communication friction. Sometimes you’ll be separated from each other in soundproof rooms. Sometimes one of you is sitting on a chair with headphones on with ANC enabled and they can’t hear you directly. The more you play Big Walk, the more you are forced to think about how you’d talk in real life as no one is talking straight into your ears every time.
This magic wouldn’t be possible if Big Walk is played with everyone on a voice call group, where you are all virtually omnipresent and reachable. Not to say Discord calls are mid, but it’s a time and place situation. Proximity chat unlocks this kind of communication that online games mostly sidestepped in the name of convenience.
Big Walk Is Taskmaster At Home And A Teambuilding Exercise
The puzzles of Big Walk makes full use of your limited ability to communicate. Many a puzzle will require at least one person be separated from the group, so they can tell you something only they could. The first few you naturally encounter is the simple kind where one person is just behind a room but still within talking range. But the puzzles get bigger scaled which requires some creative communication.
Yet Big Walk doesn’t just task you to communicate. It also gives you task with mostly open-ended solutions.
At least one puzzle (there’s a few) that involves a scouting team to do specific poses using the game’s unique arm gestures. And there’s a few ways you can solve this. Sure, you can have them do a pose from far away, but if the people up the cliff and the scouting team that can see the poses both have walkie-talkies, they can just explain the pose instead. Still a little tricky, especially when you don’t agree which side is right and which side is left or wrong. But a different solution nonetheless.
While some Big Walk puzzles have clear signposting of what is the obvious method to solve, if there’s a person in your group that’s big on lateral thinking (or watched too much Taskmaster) there are some open-ended puzzles where you can effectively “cheat,” or creatively solve. While there are no boxes you can stack in Big Walk, have a lobby with a few players with immersive sim experience and they’ll try to make use every mechanic at play to find a cheeky solution. One such moment involves a person not being able to move when carrying an object. Always ask what’s stopping you from doing the easy solution and try it, it might work!
Some of these puzzles act as great teambuilding exercises where a clear leader can emerge to lead the team, everyone dumping information on what they know of the problem at hand, and the creation of lingos and shared vocabulary to facilitate communication. Or just, vibe it out and hope everyone’s mind melded together somehow, which is just as viable! My friend group joked that it’s just missing a Flying Fox (what Malaysians called a zipline ride) activity that’s oh-so-common with these escapades designed for students and corporations. Sure enough, there’s a close-enough equivalent.
Also, the watercooler moments of comparing Big Walk sessions one had with different friend groups are wild thanks to the open-endedness of the puzzle solutions. One group might overcomplicate stuff. Another will struggle and fumble in the silliest way. If you make a supercut of five different groups of Big Walk players solving the same puzzle, you can get at least five different approaches. You can effectively create your own Taskmaster episode!
Big Walk Is Served On A Sharing Platter
There’s also something intimate about Big Walk.
Sure, it can be scaled to up to a 12-player experience, but the puzzles and the fun of exploring the world just works even with a group of just two or three. Big Walk is “friendgourmet” served in those large platters made for communal meals.
It’s the “makan talam” experience, something Muslims in certain parts of the world know well during Ramadan when breaking fast, but also just a cultural way to share a meal together. Personally, I’ve experience this regularly, sometimes with just a few close friends, sometimes another random person or two joins in the platter, sometimes it was me who was the odd man joining in. Yet without really verbally communicating, we just went on and finish the platter together. As people join and leave from the platter, we just naturally adjust our portions, finish what we could and pile up the center for anyone who’s still up for more grub. The seamlessness of how scaling up and down the experience of Big Walk feels like that of sharing a meal on a single platter would be. It just works! And it’s brilliant to witness.
While “friendslop” games are something you can see being put together haphazardly as fast as they could, House House took six whole years in developing Big Walk. You don’t necessarily feel that six years of effort in its scope (though the world is indeed big), but in the finesse of how the world and mechanics are designed to promote play and communication. There’s room for shenaniganry as well as just hanging out and socialising at any moment. Big Walk can be a third space for some group to just take their time and chill. No one outside the host needs to commit to the game to see its ending, anyone can jump in and out through the many play sessions it needs to see the ending.
That’s why it’s gourmet: the chefs that cooked with Untitled Goose Game cooked yet again, with great understanding and skill, to create this experience, and it shows.
Not Everyone “Friendslop” Should Be “Friendgourmet”
Despite the title, this piece isn’t arguing against “friendslop” itself, no. Maybe we should think of a catchier genre name, sure, but anyone can enjoy a “friendslop” game on the regular like how you’d gobble up a sloppy burger more often than more expensive gourmet equivalent. In fact, one of the biggest “friendslop” releases of the year, Meccha Chameleon, sold twenty times more than this “friendgourmet” so the appetite for cheap multiplayer experiences is still high.
“Friendgourmet” games like Big Walk don’t come out often and regularly, also not as cheap. And that should be recognised and appreciated. But it simply won’t exist, or at least have a million players buying it, if not for the sloppy foundation that indie co-op games have built in the past years leading up to Big Walk’s release.
There’s still room in the world for more “friendslop,” but it’s nice to see an elevated experience that understands the initial appeal and make it gourmet in the correct way. Gaming enthusiasts that have some understanding of game design and experience playing well-designed video games will come to appreciate these multiplayer co-op games with proximity chat when a bar as high as Big Walk is available, but it should also tell said gaming enthusiasts who might have scoffed at the rising trend of “friendslop” that this isn’t something to look down on. These games are truly fun!
If anything, the takeaway is this: a multiplayer co-op game in this age should be more about encouraging players to work together in some novel manner, rather than it being an endless grind of live service content. Make those player-on-player interactions more meaningful and impactful. Whether it’s presented as slop or gourmet, these friend games are still something gamers yearn for.
Big Walk is out now on PS5, PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch 2.