Big Walk is really good

I've played several hours of Big Walk by now. It's a multiplayer puzzle game where you look like this: And solve puzzles in buildings that look like this: In a much more "realistic" forest environment that looks like this: That contrast between the game's bright and toylike tools, structures, and characters and the much more noisy, "realistic" environment is super interesting. I think this game is thinking more carefully about realism and using realism more carefully than any game I've seen in literally decades! Any brightly-colored, kindercare-ass structure or object is puzzle-relevant. The wilderness is not. There's this pervasive ideology in a lot of game studios and player communities that "realism" is a kind of "null" perspective, vacant of meaning or style - which is never true, really. But this game feels like it's saying: okay, if we embrace the idea that realism is vacant of meaning, then it can just be the part of the game that is vacant of puzzles, and the puzzles will be…