Big Walk is a game I loved profoundly, and also one which I have said repeatedly I do not think I can play a second time. The magic of it was phenomenal, but as they would say in Titanium Court, it has been used up. And yet, this game keeps finding ways to tug so gently at me, even months after my original playthrough. I interviewed the developers inside the game. I found a community folk hero and went on a flying adventure with him.
And, a few days ago, I successfully completed Big Walk‘s last (to my knowledge), best-hidden puzzle, and was appropriately rewarded for it.
I’m about to spoil the (first) ending of Big Walk for you. If you haven’t beaten the game yet and intend to, please don’t read on. It really is magical to discover all this for yourself. Nothing here on the second ending though, so if you’re still working on that, you’re fine to continue:
Big Walk has a wonderful credits sequence where you and your group sit in chairs around an outdoor movie screen and watch them while the game’s theme plays, slow and bittersweet. I was openly weeping while this was going on in my game, even as I was laughing at the antics of my friends jumping around the screen, reading people’s names out loud in silly voices while the sun started to rise in the distance. Man, I’m tearing up writing about it now!
Not long after my adventure was over, I saw someone else who had finished Big Walk posting about a link, hidden in the credits. I went back to find it via the credits in the main menu, and there it was: a URL. I visited the website. The website has some simple instructions, which I followed. Then, I waited. I went on vacation. Someone else picked up my mail. [Note: I updated this post-publication because I’m told by Panic’s Cabel Sasser that the link doesn’t appear in the in-game credits, just in the main menu version!]
A few days ago, I was going through my stack of unopened vacation mail and found a wrinkled envelope with my address handwritten on it. It was thin, nearly empty. But I slid it open, and inside was, obviously, the same reward that there is for every other puzzle in Big Walk: a weird red shape of indeterminate nominclature covered in multicolored confetti. It was the very last one of its kind I would (almost certainly) ever find:
There was an additional little bonus inside as well:
That was it. It’s perfect.
I’ve thought this multiple times over the last few months, but this time I really do think I’ve finished Big Walk.
You can get one of these as well, if you finish the game, click the link, and follow the instructions. It does say that this is only valid “while supplies last” so it’s possible they run out of little red thingies, but hopefully you can get yours in time, if you want one.
I don’t know where the appropriate, uh, red nub facility is in which to deposit this last one. I guess sewing it onto my sick jean jacket will have to do.