Tripping Gourds

Our fourth day on the island started off with some bangers. Literally.

We needed to head out and find another radio since ours was left behind in the wild from our previous session. Luckily Nora had seen the green radio station area last time so we made our way to grab it while also turning on the transmitter.

New jams off the rip??? My kind of Big Walk:

I like the green station. Joey said one of the songs reminded him a bit of something from Donkey Kong.

After this we regrouped with John back at basecamp. I had learned that there was a trophy for climbing to the highest point on the island which to my surprise we somehow hadn't done yet. I know for a fact we had walked like right beneath it. So we began our climb.

John and Joey summited first and I followed right behind. Nora and Rachel joined just after that. What a view. In the top photo you can see Joey taking it all in.

Rachel didn't like being that high in the air so naturally we swooped her up and begged her to jump onto the tower that was sitting at the summit. Not even Big Walk is safe from the pits of peer pressure. It immediately got dark after we got her up there lol:

From here we set out to snatch up some more gourds and complete the yellow cone. HOWEVER. Things got a little haywire. Somehow on the way back to the chair lift, we lost Rachel. She was nowhere to be seen. Thankfully she had a walkie talkie on her so we just posted up at the top of the yellow cone for a while and started blasting laser beams and flares in the air for her to find.

While we waited, Joey had been scouting with binoculars and noticed a megaphone sitting on top of this other yellow structure. We wanted it badddd. Nora and I took off to grab it. The megaphone is easily one of my favorite tools in Big Walk. I find it hilarious. I carried that around with me for pretty much the rest of the night yelling out stupid things for everyone to hear.

Once Rachel arrived we set forth to the next puzzle which was this giant red roller coaster looking thing. This one was actually really cool. Under the structure was this board with holes in it and you needed to find all the pegs to place on the wall. Except finding them wasn't super easy. They were scattered through the area on the ground, on the structure and in tough to see places.

We could walk across the top of the red structure like a balance beam. I started punting some of the pieces over which worked and then also didn't work. One of the ones I kicked rolled really far away down the hill so we had to go find it later. John found the last one that was left behind in the rocks and we finished it up.

We took this gourd back to the yellow cone and were ready to move out. Except we weren't all on the same page.

Joey and I went to this blue amphitheater expecting everyone else to follow and that did not happen. We were pretty bummed. We spotted them ahead up high on the edge of this hill at a different puzzle. Neither of us had a walkie so I just yelled through the megaphone that we were going to head their way.

This next puzzle was probably one of the easier ones for us. I think it technically could have been solved by one person. It had a really short one-seater chair lift that went in a loop. One end had puzzle pieces and you had to bring them over to the other side and put them in the right order. Light work for professional Big Walkers like us.

That was now two gourds for the yellow cone. We had three to go. The next set of puzzles we accomplished was pretty cool so let's briefly go through those.

One was in a big red orbital structure. Walking into this place I was prepared to do some serious ASMR. There was a lone chair with headphones in the middle of the room with microphone stands surrounding it. You have to somehow figure out the trick with what order to push what buttons using these tools. It was actually a bit frustrating. I even had to turn off the radio. But eventually we solved it:

One of the other puzzles left was crazy and chaotic. Probably one of my favorites.

There was this giant hole in the ground. Looking down from the top it reminded me of a jungle gym of sorts. We jumped down to see the situation which caused a panic.

We realized we needed to get this gourd carrier device back up to the top but removing it from the stand closed off the normal door to the staircase. The other door was a turnstile situation and it would knock off any items you were carrying, including your backpack.

After messing around for a bit to make a plan we got all our shit back up top and then began trying to get this gourd back up through the obstacles. We were punting it and lifting each other and doing all sorts of maneuvers.

As we were right on the precipice of getting to the mountaintop, I lifted Joey on my shoulders. We had like one level to go. We could taste victory. He got a little too excited though and punted the gourd right at the ledge. It smacked and ricocheted back over our heads. The gourd fell allllllll the way back to the bottom, somehow not landing on any of the other platforms below. We had to do it all over again. I slowly pushed him off the edge for a punishment:

It felt really good to complete that puzz-

Wait. I've just now decided that I am going to refer to puzzles as trials instead. Gourd Trials. Thank you for your understanding on this pressing matter.

The other trial we completed for the yellow cone was another audio based challenge. Essentially there was a room filled with speakers playing different soundbites. Joey and Nora had to go into a separate room and communicate to us the right sounds to find. It was fun and really noisy. As a team we finished that one up really quickly.

Oh, and at some point during this run of Gourd Trials Joey and I stumbled upon a bunch of weird pink structures on the ground with speakers–another radio transmitter was here! We were hyped. This one was sounding really new age-y:

Anyways. Now with enough Gourds we could finally get the yellow key which would open up this yellow tunnel structure going into the mountain. We were assuming completing this would also open up the ominous Black Tower.

Let me just say the tunnels were crazy. I don't know who built all this on the island yet but this whole place is filled with one mystery after the next. The tunnels have some markings on the ground every now and then to show which cone you are heading towards so you can kind of plan which area of the island you are coming out on.

As we ran through the tunnels with excitement we entered a room that was clearly designed as a club. Yeah. That's right. A dance club in an underground tunnel on this weird island. We started raving immediately and pushing all of the lights on and off at the control station. The club also came with a new radio station for us to get rowdy to:

It was so sick. Somehow while in this room both Joey and my screen's started wigging out big time. It was like most of the screen would turn white and then the rest was in black shadows. You could hardly see where you were going. We both play on PS5 so maybe it was some console glitch. We started panicking because everyone left us behind.

We eventually made it out and found our way to the BLACK TOWER.

All of us were pretty unsure of what we would find in here.

When we made it to the top there was a set of buttons that we all needed to push. We did that and I immediately saw Nora's eyes start going bonkers:

She was tripping gourds, mannn.

She started narrating about her visions. She saw Joey and I both walking around this locked part of the map we knew we had to eventually get to. Beyond the green wall. Past Mother Gourd.

After this we learned the vision only happens to one person in your group. You can look up what she saw online if you want to.

The buttons also opened up a door at the top of the tower which had six more slots for Gourds–plus this cool looking black key we needed to unlock. We knew this would take us to Mother Gourd.

Before we logged off Joey and I finally convinced everyone to go to the blue amphitheater so we could solve that trial. Both of us were hoping there would be more of a light show or something involving the radio here but it was mainly just for the gourd. We took it back to the Black Tower and logged off for the night.

The next post in this series of Big Walk Notes will contain a few sessions of playing since the end game is upon us. We've actually played a couple times now since this session–I'm writing to you from both the past and the future now. Stay tuned for that.

One day we shall all bathe in the light of Mother Gourd.