Big Walk Wiki
The One Loop the Whole Game Runs On
Every piece of progress in Big Walk is the same four steps, repeated with a different colour:
- Solve challenges to earn gourds. Challenges are scattered across the landscape. Finishing one hands your group a small oblong prize, usually sitting inside a frosted glass container.
- Carry a full set to the matching tower. Colours match: green gourds belong to the Green Tower. A tower with an incomplete set does nothing.
- Turn the set into a key. The tower releases a raw key, and the key has to be run through the key cutter stations before it will fit anything.
- Use the key on the thing it opens. Which is never the tower itself — it is a door, a station or a lift somewhere else on the island.
That last point is where most groups get stuck. Finishing a tower feels like an ending, but the tower is only the vending machine. The reward is a key you still have to walk somewhere.
What is a "gourd"? The game never names them. Guides and players have settled on gourds, nubbins and blorbs for the same object, because it is roughly gourd-shaped and House House left it anonymous. This site says gourds. If you read "nubbins" somewhere else, it is the same thing.
What Each Tower Unlocks
| Tower | Gourds needed | What the key opens | Achievement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drawbridge (starting area) | 4 | The drawbridge out of the starting area — the gate to everything else | Big Walk |
| Red Tower | 5 | The Map Room, up the large stairs near the starting area | Big View |
| Green Tower | 5 | The chairlift, at its station | Big Sit |
| Yellow Tower | 5 | The tunnel network and the coloured doors inside it | Big Tunnel |
| Blue Tower | 5 | The train, at its station | Big Ride |
| Black tower | 6 | The Black Key, and with it the gate through the wall | Big Wall |
Five colours, twenty-six gourds, one wall. That is the whole game stated in a sentence, and it is the sentence nobody tells you at the start.
Step 1: Get Out of the Starting Area
Your first job is the drawbridge. Four gourds are within a short walk of where everyone spawns, and the key they produce goes into the slot at the red bridge. Step onto the bridge once it lowers and the whole group has the first achievement.
Before you leave, do two things that cost five minutes and save an hour later:
- Open the shortcut gates. There are gates leading away from the starting area in more than one direction. They open from one side only, so the first time you approach one from the far side, open it — you have just built a shortcut back to spawn that the whole group can use for the rest of the game.
- Pick up an item scanner. It marks nearby interactive objects on your screen. In a dark or cluttered area it is the difference between a five-minute search and a forty-minute one. See the gadgets guide.
Step 2: Red Tower, for the Map
Do this one first. The Red Tower's key opens the Map Room, and the Map Room is the moment Big Walk stops being a fog of hills and becomes a place you can plan routes across. Until then every conversation is "the tall thing near the trees" and every regroup is a guess.
Just over half of all players have visited the map, and just under half never did — a gap that says more about how easy the game is to wander in than about how hard the Red Tower is.
Step 3: The Other Three Colours, in Any Order
Green, Yellow and Blue can be done in whatever order your group stumbles into. If you want an argument for a specific one, this is the order that shortens the walking:
- Green Tower → the chairlift. Your first real transport, and it opens the detour below.
- Yellow Tower → the tunnels. Fast routes under the island, plus the coloured doors, plus the hidden room behind the Big Makeover achievement.
- Blue Tower → the train. The best long-distance transport in the game, which makes the black tower's scattered challenges much less painful.
Each unlock makes the next trip shorter, so the order matters less than finishing them all before you look at the black tower.
Detour worth taking: Big Climb. Once the chairlift runs, ride it one station west and get off under the mountain carrying the highest point on the island. The path up is short. The structure at the top is unmistakable, and reaching it is the Big Climb achievement — plus the best view in the game to sit and look at for a while.
Step 4: The Black Tower and the Black Key
The black tower only accepts its six gourds once the coloured towers are done, and its challenges are the ones that assume your group has every tool and every shortcut. Bring the full set, take the Black Key, and carry it to the gate at the western end of the wall.
Walking through that gate is the Big Wall achievement, and fewer than five players in a hundred have done it. If your group gets here, you are almost certainly finishing tonight.
Step 5: Beyond the Wall
On the other side is a giant sphere. Inside it is the last run of co-operative rooms in the game — no new mechanics, just everything the island taught you, at full size. Finish them, leave through the far side, and the ending plays.
That ending is the Big Goodbye achievement, and for most groups it is where the game ends. It is not where the game stops: there is a second, harder ending after the credits, and the endings guide covers what it takes.
How Long This Takes
Plan on three to four sessions of two hours or so for a group that talks a lot and detours often, and rather less for a group that beelines. Two things dominate the clock, and neither is puzzle difficulty:
- Walking. Before the chairlift and the train, crossing the island is genuinely slow. Every transport unlock pays for itself.
- Regrouping. Big Walk has no minimap, no player nameplates and no waypoints. A group that scatters loses twenty minutes to finding each other. The co-op tips are mostly about this.
The save lives with whoever hosts, so the same person has to host every session for the group to keep its progress. Pick the friend with the most free time, not the best PC — see the how to play guide for how hosting works.
Walkthrough Questions
How many towers are in Big Walk?
Five: the Red, Green, Yellow and Blue towers, each needing five gourds, and the black tower, which needs six and produces the Black Key. The drawbridge in the starting area works the same way but needs only four.
What order should I do the Big Walk towers in?
Red first, because it opens the Map Room and everything after that is easier to navigate. Then Green, Yellow and Blue in any order — the suggested run is Green for the chairlift, Yellow for the tunnels, Blue for the train, because each unlock shortens the next walk. The black tower comes last.
How do I unlock the map in Big Walk?
Bring five gourds to the Red Tower, run the key it releases through the key cutter stations, then take the finished key to the large stairs near the starting area. That opens the Map Room, and visiting it unlocks the Big View achievement.
How do I unlock the train?
The Blue Tower. Five blue gourds, cut the key, use it at the train station. Boarding a moving train is the Big Ride achievement. The chairlift works the same way through the Green Tower.
What are gourds in Big Walk?
The small oblong prizes that challenges reward, usually found inside frosted glass containers. The game never gives them a name, which is why guides call them gourds, nubbins or blorbs interchangeably. You spend them at towers.
Can I skip a challenge I cannot do?
Yes. The host can turn on challenge skipping in the accessibility menu, which puts a skip option on challenges. House House added it so that challenges needing hearing, speech, quick reactions or fine motor control cannot lock a group out. See the settings guide.
Next: the endings guide for both finishes, the gadgets guide for the tools this route assumes you have found, and the achievements page for how each of the twelve maps onto the route above.