Big Walk: All 84 Puzzle Locations and Player Counts

The Island has 84 puzzles marked on it. 16 of them ask for a specific number of players, and that is the part worth knowing before you set off with the wrong sized group. Open the layer and all 84 are on the map at once.

Most people call them puzzles. The game itself says challenge, which is why the layer on this map is named Challenges and why the accessibility options talk about skipping one. Both words mean the same objects, so search for either and you are in the right place.

How many puzzles are in Big Walk

84 on the marked layer. That is more than the numbered puzzle stations the walkthroughs count, because the layer includes the ones nobody has bothered to number: the small ones off the main route and the ones inside the challenge area. If you have been working from a list of two dozen and finding extras, this is why.

The 16 puzzles that name a player count

Sixteen markers carry a player count of 2, 3 or 4. Some name a single number and some name two. They are not spread out: all sixteen sit at seven places on the island, and at every one of those seven the markers between them cover 2, 3 and 4.

Each of the three values turns up on exactly seven markers. Eleven markers name one value on their own, five say 2, four say 3 and two say 4, and the other five markers name a pair.

If your group is playing four handed tonight and three handed tomorrow, these seven spots are the ones where turning up with a different number of people changes what is in front of you. The other 68 markers say nothing about party size at all.

Where the other 68 puzzles sit

They are spread over the entire island rather than sitting in one area. Cut the island into four bands from the north coast to the southern tip and the counts come out at 12, 37, 21 and 14, so the middle band carries the largest share but no band is empty.

Most of them stand alone. 63 of the 84 have no other challenge marker anywhere near them, and the rest sit in pairs or small groups, the largest holding four markers.

Height is the thing that catches groups out. 28 of the 84 sit close to sea level and only 7 are up on the high ground, so the majority of your walking between them is along the middle of the island rather than over the top of it. Reading the terrain under a marker before you set off saves more time than picking the nearest one on a flat picture.

Telescope puzzles and where they are

The map has 12 telescope markers, and 9 of them have a challenge marker sitting right beside them. That pairing is the reason to view challenges and telescopes together rather than one at a time.

Five of the twelve telescopes are at a single spot, around 3921, 1617, well above the ground beneath them. The other seven are scattered. The telescope layer on its own makes the difference between that cluster and the singles obvious in a second.

The three telescopes with no challenge marker beside them are all down near the shore. If you are hunting the last few challenges, the high ones are the better lead. The telescope at 3670, 1711 has two challenge markers near it and a gourd marked at the same point, and the highest challenge on the island, at 3602, 1731, has a Radio and a pair of Binoculars marked alongside it.

Coordinate boards and the two numbers on them

Wooden boards around the island give two numbers. The island holds exactly one Coordinate reader, and it shows the pair for wherever the person carrying it is standing, so a board and a reader together point at one spot.

The two numbers work like a grid reference. The first runs from the north coast down to the southern tip, and the second runs from the west side across to the east. Every marker on this map sits at its own pair, which is why the coordinates in this article are written that way.

A board reading 3259, 1883 points at a place on the north side with a gourd marked on it. Open that point and you can see what is there before anybody walks over.

The reader is a single copy, so one person in the group carries it and everyone else works from what they read out. Its marker sits at 3971, 1929 in the south east, beside a bank of gourd stands. Centre the gear layer there to see exactly where to pick it up.

Skipping a puzzle your group cannot do

The accessibility options let you skip a challenge. Any of them. It is worth knowing on the evening when one of the seven player-count spots wants a fourth person you have not got.

The same setting covers the case nobody plans for, where one specific person in the group cannot get through one specific challenge. Somebody who gets motion sick on a long climb, or who keeps dropping out of the session, does not have to hold everybody at the same marker for an hour.

Working through all 84 puzzles

Press Mark on a challenge marker once your group has cleared it. The marks are kept in your browser, and Hide marked strips the cleared ones off the map, so a second session opens on the ones you still owe rather than on all 84.

Share this view copies the address with your filter, your position and any open marker in it. On a challenge that needs people in two places, one person sends the view and everybody else lands on the same picture instead of describing hills to each other over voice chat.

If you are closing out the layer, work the middle band first. It holds 37 of the 84, so one long trip through it clears more than a trip anywhere else on the island.