gaming

Big Walk maps Wilsons Promontory with LIDAR; devs embrace friends focus, reject 'slop'

Big Walk is a co-op-only online puzzle game from House House that centers on hanging out with friends while solving environmental puzzles. The development team based the game's island directly on Wilsons Promontory National Park in south‑east Victoria, using a LIDAR heightmap and populating it with native plants and the park's granite. Developers welcome the emphasis on social play but object to the pejorative 'slop' in the term 'friendslop', arguing the label understates how thoughtfully the games are made.

• Big Walk is co-op-only and designed around social hanging-out and environmental puzzle-solving.
• House House used a LIDAR heightmap of Wilsons Promontory National Park and modelled all in-game plants on species native to the Prom, including its granite terrain.
• Developer Nico Disseldorp supports the 'friends' categorization for social games but says the word 'slop' carries negative baggage and is not fitting.
• House House setting Big Walk in a recognisably Australian bush environment is notable because few Australian studios explicitly set games in their home country.