Big Walk

When shouting won't reach, there are hand signals, notes, flashlights, walkie-talkies and flare guns. Many puzzles take speech away on purpose, so you mime, sing or send codes.

The idea came during lockdown. The Untitled Goose Game team wanted something better than big video calls, where you can't have a side conversation, and built a prototype in a week. They planned on up to three years and spent six. One co-founder admitted that had they known, they would have pulled the plug.

The world is a loose model of Australia's Wilsons Promontory national park at roughly one twentieth of its size. The sound designer punched the sand of its Squeaky Beach with her fists and made every character sound with a dog toy.

More than a million copies sold in six days. At launch players complained that even people right next to them were barely audible. The studio said it had fixed that but left the voice range alone. Players leave 95% positive out of 40,741 reviews; critics give it 91 on Metacritic. By our Recommended Score it is #73 of 4,736 games.

Liked it? Try We Were Here Together, where two players in a castle have only a walkie-talkie between them, and It Takes Two, which can only be played as a pair.