House House's Big Walk Was Built Over About 6 Years From a Lobby Idea
The account traces a hit cooperative game back to two pandemic habits, idle lobby downtime and proximity voice chat, which is a concrete origin story for a studio that had already proven it could sell a strange idea.
Reporting from 1 source: Automaton.
Big Walk, the cooperative adventure game from Australian studio House House published by Panic on August 4, took about six years to refine. Programmer Nico Disseldorp told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier the idea grew from pre-match lobbies in team-based competitive games and from pandemic-era Zoom calls. It supports up to 12 players and is available on PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.
Big Walk arrived on August 4 with a Steam user review rating of "Overwhelmingly Positive," a 97% approval rate across roughly 10,000 reviews, and more than 1 million units sold in under a week. Publisher Panic and developer House House shipped it on PC via Steam, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2, with in-game Japanese display support. Up to 12 players control bird-like creatures made of three spheres and explore an open world of puzzles and challenges together. The game's path there ran through pre-match lobbies and pandemic-era calls, according to programmer Nico Disseldorp.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.