Measuring "Fun to Cooperate" Instead of "Satisfying to Solve" — Big Walk's New Yardstick for Puzzles

Introduction

Today's Tsumiki roundup. One piece today.

A piece on Big Walk, the new game from House House — makers of Untitled Goose Game — written by Thinky Games editor Rachel Watts. It's about how you measure whether a puzzle is "good" in the first place.

Measuring "Fun to Cooperate" Instead of "Satisfying to Solve" — How Big Walk Redraws the Puzzle Yardstick

Big Walk is a co-op exploration game released August 4, 2026 by House House through Panic. In the opening of her piece, Watts writes she had few expectations going in — she just wanted a laid-back online game to hang out with friends in, without falling to her death off treacherous mountains, shooting monsters in the face (badly), or holding back tears hunting ghosts in creepy houses.

But Watts says the game upended that low bar entirely. "Big Walk drop-kicks that approach off the side of a mountain. Here, the quality of a puzzle isn't in how satisfying the solution is, but how fun the cooperation is when solving it." That's a claim about moving the measuring stick itself — from solution design to the cooperative process.

The mechanics back it up. Voice chat only works at close range, and some areas are cut off by soundproof barriers, so tools like walkie-talkies, binoculars, megaphones, whiteboards, and laser pointers become the actual means of solving. Even something as simple as "press the buttons at the same time" only becomes hard because the group has to negotiate a signal and agree on timing on the spot. The difficulty comes not from logical complexity, but from the act of reaching consensus as a group.

The terrain itself does double duty. Maps, landmark structures, a day-night cycle, and moments where players get physically separated combine so that the open landscape demands communication on its own, without a purpose-built "puzzle room." The design also scales across group sizes — as the line "we all need to press our buttons at the same time" suggests, nobody gets left behind.

Why does this angle interest me? Puzzle discourse usually gravitates toward the elegance of a solution or the consistency of its logic — the vocabulary of logic puzzles and escape rooms. Big Walk brings in a completely different yardstick: the quality of the cooperative process itself. And this isn't new territory for House House — Untitled Goose Game also measured its play not by the satisfaction of winning, but by the quality of mischief. Big Walk reads like the same yardstick, extended from solo play into co-op.

Today's Quote

"Big Walk drop-kicks that approach off the side of a mountain. Here, the quality of a puzzle isn't in how satisfying the solution is, but how fun the cooperation is when solving it."

— Rachel Watts, "Big Walk turns communication into a puzzle, and puzzles into a language that brings friends together" (Thinky Games). I like the bluntness of judging a puzzle by the relationships built on the way there, rather than by the "correct" answer.

Closing

Honestly, cooperative puzzles are my weak spot. I can grind alone at something I'm stuck on, but syncing up with someone else is much harder. Which is exactly why Big Walk's yardstick — not whether you solved it, but whether the time spent stuck together was fun — put me a little at ease. See you again tomorrow.

Sources

Article covered today:

・Big Walk turns communication into a puzzle, and puzzles into a language that brings friends together (Rachel Watts, Thinky Games, published September 1, 2026)