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First Key Walkthrough
The First Key Walkthrough page is here to help you unlock the walkway past the red stairs, near the opening area of the game. This is the first major puzzle in Big Walk, and you need to solve it in order to progress in the game and discover more of the island.
Use the below list of headings to jump to the exact puzzle that you need help with, or read on from here to see the entire walkthrough page in full.
- Starting From the Start
- Exploring the First Area
- Find the Four Red Figures to Unlock the Key
- How to Free and Cut the Key
Starting From the Start
Every time you start a game of Big Walk, you'll begin in the same starting location. From here, you can explore the room to learn the controls of the game and get to grips with how to play.
When you're ready, follow the open door towards the staircase. Walk down and then out into the world!
Exploring the First Area
Depending on how long you spent in the starting area, it may be daytime or nighttime. If it is nighttime, you can interact with the colorful baubles nearby to turn them into lights.
Further down the hill, you should come across a bench with a device on it, as well as a small terminal with a button that you can press. These terminals are all around the island. They fire off signal flares (almost like fireworks!), and you can use them to help you and friends find each other if you get separated.
The device on the bench is a Scanner. By using it when it's in your hands, you'll be able to see which items are and are not interactable nearby. Items that you can interact with will shimmer with many yellow particles, and the closer you get, the more particles you'll be able to see. They will also coalesce into an X shape as you get closer too. Use this Scanner to find items that you've dropped on the ground or things that you might not otherwise have seen.
Change Your Character Color
Not far from the orange bench, you'll see an incomplete hut in the distance. Inside it is a wall of colors, plus a paintbrush and a mirror. Here, you can see what you look like and also paint your friends to change what color they are. You can't paint yourself, so if you want to change how you look, you'll have to rely on communication and co-operation with your friends!
Traveling in the same direction from this house will lead you towards the beach, where you'll find a number of buttons, some indents, and a key.
Find the Four Red Figures to Unlock the Key
Finding these keys and unlocking them is the key (get it?) to progressing to other areas in Big Walk. The process goes like this.
- Solve nearby puzzles to find red figures
- Insert the red figures into the indents near the key
- Take the key when you fill each indent
- Cut the key by using the small key terminals and following the arrows
- Place the key in a nearby slot to enter the next area\
So to exit this starting area, you'll need to find four puzzles nearby and solve them!
The First Figure - Looking Platform
From the key, follow the nearby sandy path up the hill. As the path curves back around, you'll find yourself on a big viewing platform that can see most of the whole starting area.
The telescope points to one very specific location, where you'll see a glass box with something inside of it.
Next to the telescope is a button. Pressing the button has two effects.
- It provides an echoey amplification effect to the voice of the people standing near the button. You can hear this while out in the nearby area, but it is echoey, quiet, and hard to make out.
- It also turns on a red light across the valley, and opens the small box near the light when pressed.
You need one person to hold the button down on the platform, while another person walks over to the light/box. When the person gets there, they'll be able to look inside the box and find a red figure!
You can either carry it with you or take it to the key to place it where it needs to go. Just don't lose it, or you'll be searching through the grass like an emu looking for food!
If you're up on the viewing platform, you can use your perspective to get an idea of where the other puzzles in the valley are.
The Second Figure - Yellow Scaffold
From the viewing platform, walk down the hill on your left and walk along the left wall of the valley until you find a tall yellow scaffold structure. At the top of the structure, you'll see a red figure clamped inside of a vice. Along this elevated beam, closer to the center of the structure, you should see a small button.
The goal with this puzzle is to reach that button to release the figure. You do this by picking your friends up! The height of the tower will be modified to match the player session size, so you'll need either 2, 3 or 4 people to stack together in order to press this button.
To pick up multiple people, you first need to start with one person picking up another. Then, a third person can pick up the person who is already holding someone to create a three-person tower. A fourth person can then follow suit to create a four-person tower!
The person on top of the human tower should be tall enough to reach the button, which will begin to unlock the vice as soon as it is pressed. Make sure to catch the figure when it drops so you don't lose it!
The Third Figure - Blue House Symbols
From the viewing platform, this third puzzle is hard to see. You can either skip to the fourth puzzle (which is the green structure on the right side of the valley, very close to the third puzzle), or you can follow these directions.
From the platform, walk towards the flare button and bench and then follow that same direction. If you skew slightly to travel up the creek, you can then walk up this small hill through the trees.
When you're closer to the puzzle, you should see a branching path that will take you to a blue house, or a green structure (the fourth puzzle). Go towards the blue house for the third puzzle.
This blue house-house requires someone to stand inside the room with the door closed, while the other person tries to match symbols on the peg board.
When the door to the room is closed, a randomized sequence of symbols will appear. The person inside the room needs to communicate to the person or people outside which symbols match with which slot. The position of the symbols on the wall corresponds with the position these symbols need to hold on the board outside.
The person trying to match the symbols outside will need to pick up the various white symbol blocks, look at them, discuss with the person inside the room if that matches their description, and then place the correct symbols in the correct location on the peg board. Once all five symbols are placed correctly, you can press the button next to the small black screen to submit the solution. If you get this right, you will unlock the nearby figure on the wall!
Editor's Note
From Kerry Palmer, Guides Editor π’
For the person holding the symbol blocks, you can hold the symbol blocks up above your head to turn them around and show them to your friends. Use this to show the person inside the room which symbol you are holding, so they can more accurately identify which symbol you want to place in a given location on the board.
The Fourth Figure - Green Synchronized Buttons
The fourth puzzle is located in the green rectangular structure. You can see this structure across the valley from the viewing platform, or from the dirt path leading away from the blue house.
When you approach the green structure, you should see a red figure locked down in the center, plus a number of pillars holding up a second story of the structure. Walk to where you can climb onto the lower level of the structure.
To free the figure, you need to press all buttons at roughly the same time. These buttons are located on the pillars surrounding the red figure.
Editor's Note
From Kerry Palmer, Guides Editor π’
Try not to press the buttons on the pillar if you're not trying to solve the puzzle. When they get pressed at the wrong time, the button will eventually become inactive, and it takes a good handful of seconds for it to eventually reset and press it again. Make sure you're synced up with your team when you try to solve this!
Once you've done this, the red figure will be freed! Now, time to return back to the beach and unlock that key.
How to Free and Cut the Key
Place all the red figures in their respective indents by having one person hold their cover open with the buttons, while someone else places the figures. Once all figures are placed, the key will be ejected from its slot!
You can't take it straight to the red walkway yet though, you need to cut the key to the right shape first. To do this, you need to use the small pedestals nearby, starting the next-closest one to where the key was trapped.
When you slot the key into this pedestal, a mechanism will cut a portion of the key, and then direct you towards a different pedestal nearby by revealing an arrow on top. Use the arrows as a guide to take you to each key-cutting pedestal. The first, second and third pedestals are all a short walk up the nearby hill, and then the fourth and fifth pedestals are located back down on the beachfront, right near the water.
Once you've cut the key to the right shape by using all five pedestals, you can now walk up the red stairs and place the key in the slot. This will lower the bridge, and you will be able to progress to the next area!