Big Walk is a game about going on a long hike with your friends and getting lost together. I love it very much. There are many reasons why I love it, and you can read about some of them in my review, but one thing I love that I did not have time to address in the review is the tutorial. It’s fantastic.
I do not often think of tutorials as “fun.” They are, at their best, helpful and informative. But Big Walk‘s tutorial is very, very fun. Please let me walk you through it and explain why, though I think you may need to experience it for yourself to truly understand (you should play Big Walk):
When you first appear in a game of Big Walk, your screen looks like this:
When you turn around, there’s a long tunnel ahead of you, which leads into a big room that looks like a child’s playground:
You can wander around the room in any direction you like, and depending on where you go, you might end up seeing sections of the tutorial in a different order. That’s fine. There’s no importance to the order in which you learn these things. If you go to the left along the path, as many might do, you’ll encounter several other little halls and rooms like your own, from which your friends who you are playing with will begin to emerge. They will be exploring the tutorial at the same time as you, so you may find them shouting at you across the room or clanging cowbells at you as you learn. More on that later.
You may also encounter an object that looks like a football, and may or may not figure out how to pick it up.
Drop down, and there’s a wall with four images and four buttons, showing how to sprint, jump, crouch, and sit. You’ll likely try all these out:
A great place to try them out is right behind you, on this jungle gym, which also has a fun little thing to learn on a sign:
You’ll try it on the slide, and it works as you think it does. Whee! At this point, my friends had all come over and we were taking turns sliding down.
The real fun begins as you walk forward from the bottom of the slide. You’ll first encounter a big orb, and you’ll probably figure out on your own that you can click to pick it up. If you click again, it lights up. Click on, click off. Now you have a light you can run around blinking at people.
Keep moving forward into the jungle gym area and there’s a button. Push it! A lightbulb turns on. Let go, it turns off. On and off on and off.
Just behind that, a pile of light-up orbs, and some fun information on another thing you can do with them:
As you practice your kicks, you probably notice something VERY fun to your right. Cowbells! With three different pitches! Pick them up and shake them to make obnoxious sounds. At this point, all three cowbells had already been found by my friends, who were banging them around elsewhere in the room.
Then there’s this bit, which explains gestures, and another area that shows off how to use text chat, and that’s the tutorial.
Why do I love this so much? Why is this remarkable at all? Two big reasons: the presence of other people, and the encouragement to play. During this tutorial, my group (six total) were all bouncing around the room, waving our arms, ringing cowbells, kicking orbs, turning on lights, and otherwise causing general mayhem. It was absolutely fantastic fun, like we’d been tossed into a toy room.
What’s more, most of the learning was accomplished by us just…doing things. Yes, there were signs indicating the controls, but there were no massive pop-up paragraphs explaining what sorts of things we might use all this knowledge for. There was no counter refusing to let us move forward until we’d turned on the light seven times. No one was condescendingly explaining to us how to slash a sword or talking about upgrade systems. Nothing was explained to us that we did not have full access to or understanding of yet. The light orb works exactly like it does here for the entire game, and is used for exactly for the purpose you think it’s used for. I frequently forgot I was even in a tutorial. We were just goofin’ around.
After this, there are (almost) no other tutorials or explanations anywhere else in the game. Everything you need to learn how to play Big Walk is taught by the game giving you some annoying items and letting you toss them around for as long as you like.
When you and your friends are ready, there’s one exit to funnel you all out together. You can take whatever you like from the tutorial room (we took a light, and all the cowbells) on your walk with you. A long staircase opens out onto a vista:
And off you go.
