Big Walk launched on PS5 with a Metacritic score of 92, which is the kind of number that usually means “this is the consensus pick of the year.” House House, the studio behind Untitled Goose Game, built a co-op open-world game that scales from two players up to twelve, and the headline is that it is free for PS Plus subscribers through August 31. After that, it costs $19.99 on every platform.
I am not going to tell you the score is wrong. The reviews are pretty consistent that the proximity chat and the puzzle design are doing the heavy lifting. What I am going to do is talk about what the marketing glosses over: there is no matchmaking. That single fact changes who the game is for and how much value you actually get from it.
What the game actually is
Big Walk is an open-world co-op game where you and your friends explore a large environment and unlock new areas by solving puzzles together. The world scales based on how many people are in your lobby, and the developers tuned the experience to feel different in a two-player group versus a six-player one. That scaling is the design hook, not the puzzles themselves.
Proximity chat is the standout feature, and it is what most of the positive reviews mention first. Proximity chat is a system where you only hear other players when their characters are near yours in the game world. In a twelve-player lobby, that creates a natural rhythm of voices fading in and out as groups move around. In a two-player group, it means you hear your partner breathing but not a stranger two hundred meters away talking to their friends.
Crossplay is supported across PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. That is the part that matters if you have friends split across platforms, and it is also the part that makes the lack of matchmaking easier to swallow. If everyone you want to play with has to be in your friends list anyway, matchmaking would mostly be a convenience feature.
What the PS Plus offer really gets you
The free PS Plus window runs through August 31, and the rules are the standard PlayStation Plus claim-and-keep model. You have to claim the game before the deadline, and you have to keep your subscription active to retain access. Cancel the subscription, and you lose the game unless you buy it separately.
This is worth being explicit about because it is not the same as a “free game forever” giveaway. If you intend to cancel PS Plus after August 31 anyway, the free claim is a thirty-day rental with a foot in the door. If you are keeping the subscription long-term, the free claim is real savings.
For anyone not on PS Plus, the $19.99 price point is the real comparison. That puts Big Walk in the same neighborhood as a mid-tier indie release, well below the $69.99 standard for current AAA games, and at parity with the Switch 2 and PC versions.
The no-matchmaking problem
Here is the thing the marketing does not lead with. Big Walk has no built-in matchmaking. If you boot up the game and try to find a random group, you will not find one. You need to organize sessions with people you know, and the entire experience is built around that assumption.
In a vacuum, that would be a deal-breaker for most multiplayer games. The reason it is not a deal-breaker here is that the game is designed around small groups and proximity chat. Random matchmaking would arguably make the experience worse. But it does mean that if your friends list is empty, this game has nothing to offer you on day one.
The PS Plus offer and the crossplay support are both load-bearing on this point. A free game is only as useful as the people you can convince to play it, and crossplay is what lets you assemble a group from three different platforms. Without either of those, the no-matchmaking design would be a much harder sell.
For solo players, this is a hard pass. For players with a regular group of two to twelve friends, this is a soft yes. The gap between those two readings is the entire review.
A practical checklist before you claim:
- Confirm at least one friend is also on PS Plus, PC, or Switch 2 and willing to play
- Pick a weekend window when two to four of you can commit two to three hours
- Decide in advance whether you are keeping PS Plus past August 31
- If you are fence-sitting on PS Plus, treat this as a bonus, not a reason to subscribe
- Buy it at $19.99 outside the offer only if you actually have the group ready to go
What the comparison looks like
I went through a few similar co-op games to see where Big Walk fits. The short version is that very few open-world co-op games exist at this price point with this kind of crossplay support. Most of the comparison set is either more expensive, single-platform, or both.
The puzzle design is also where the studio’s history matters. House House won multiple awards for Untitled Goose Game’s puzzle design, and Big Walk carries that sensibility forward. The puzzles are not the main draw for me, but they are well above average for the genre, and they work because they require coordination rather than reflexes.
What is missing is any kind of progression or persistent state that would give you a reason to keep playing after you have seen all the puzzles. The source material does not mention a season pass or ongoing content plans, which suggests the game is meant to be played through once with your friends and then shelved. That is fine for a $19.99 purchase. It is less fine if you grabbed it on PS Plus expecting an evergreen live-service game.
Trade-offs
Big Walk is not free in the way the headlines suggest. The PS Plus offer is a rental tied to your subscription status, and the $19.99 full-price version is the only path to permanent ownership. The no-matchmaking design means the game is only as good as your existing friends list. The crossplay and the free window help, but they do not solve the underlying problem for solo players.
If you have a regular co-op group of two to six people and at least one of you is on PS Plus, claim it before August 31 and you have a solid weekend activity for the cost of an active subscription. If your friends list is mostly empty, the same offer is worth zero to you, and the $19.99 price should probably be spent on something with a built-in community. If you are on the fence about PS Plus, the offer alone does not justify the subscription. It only makes sense if you were already keeping the service for other reasons.
The bigger trade-off is between the genre fit and the social fit. Big Walk is a strong entry in the co-op open-world category, but the category itself is narrow. The game is what it is, and what it is, is a tightly designed small-group experience. That is a real value if it lines up with how you play. It is irrelevant if it does not.
Bottom line
The Metacritic score is not wrong, but it is also not the whole story. Big Walk is a well-made co-op game that rewards having friends to play with and punishes not having any. The PS Plus offer is a good deal for the right audience and a non-deal for everyone else. The $19.99 price is fair for what you get, assuming the genre matches your play style.
If you only do one thing from this article, claim the game on PS Plus before August 31 if you have a group to play with. Let it pass if you do not.