The next big content drop for Walkabout Mini Golf, our go-to VR experience for years now, is just around the corner. As we covered previously, the Mighty Coconut team has collaborated with Aardman for a super fun looking Wallace & Gromit course, and it’ll finally go live across all VR platforms (PS VR2, Meta Quest, Steam VR, PICO) on Thursday, July 25th.
Being a licensed team-up has provided Walkabout and Wallace & Gromit fans with a lot to look forward to in this DLC including “10x the amount of animation” of any previous course, a plethora or Aardman characters, creatures, scenes, gags, and references , and crazy new new inventions/holes inspired by the sketches of Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park. Additionally the course will feature the voice of Ben Whitehead who has voiced Wallace since 2009. Phew.
Check out the new teaser trailer and some course stills, along with additional details below and at the official site. Stay tuned for our impressions as well!
Wallace & Gromit Teaser Trailer – Walkabout Mini Golf:
Walkabout Mini Golf – Wallace & Gromit course stills:
With “Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace & Gromit”—the latest DLC for the best rated and most beloved multiplayer experience in virtual reality—Mighty Coconut is pushing the limits of the technology, the game’s low-poly art style, and players’ imaginations for what is possible. Following courses based on the Jim Henson Company’s Labyrinth, Cyan’s Myst, and Meow Wolf, the latest collaboration brings the players together into a very nostalgic place indeed: 62 West Wallaby Street.
Here, Wallace and Gromit’s industrious spirit comes to life, allowing players to explore their beloved home and garden. It’s an apt metaphor for the 100% independent studio behind the game, which is putting innovation at the center of their simple strategy.
Mighty Coconut, which started as an animation studio in 2014 on the heels of Walkabout Mini Golf creator’s Lucas Martell’s award-winning short film THE OCEANMAKER, owes much of its success in the virtual reality games space to its animation and storytelling roots—and episodic TV production discipline—which are evident throughout the first couple of dozen mini golf worlds they’ve launched.
With their 27th course, developed in partnership with Aardman, those animation and tech skills have been pushed to the limits. Examples are ten times the moving and interactive contraptions, characters, and other elements, pushing modern VR platforms and hardware to their limits for deceivingly simple and deeply enjoyable experiences.
A Cracking Real Experience
Both studios are excited by the idea that this mini golf adventure will feel like a very real part of the Wallace & Gromit cinematic universe, for long-time fans as well as new audiences. For their part, Aardman not only licensed the rights to 62 West Wallaby Street, Wallace, Gromit, and Feathers McGraw along with gadgets from several of their award winning films, but Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park even contributed sketches for mini golf hole ideas. In addition, the course features the voice of Ben Whitehead, the voice actor for Wallace since 2009, when he first voiced him in Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures. Players can brace themselves for a whirlwind of ingenious contraptions that will tickle die-hard fans and curious newcomers alike.The new course release comes at a time when Mighty Coconut is adding an increasing amount of content and experiences to each release, including new game modes, avatar packs, and forthcoming surprise features. These enhancements ensure that the game remains a compelling, persistent experience where players can meet up, challenge themselves and one another, and choose any number of adventures together.
The new “Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace & Gromit” course will be released this Thursday at 11 a.m. CST, featuring 18 easy mode and hard mode holes, specially designed lost balls to collect, a commemorative in-game putter, and themed avatars. But unlike the 26 courses before it, “Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace & Gromit” will also invite players to use (or avoid) a litany of themed contraptions from the minds of Wallace and Gromit to make their putts under par.
Wallace & Gromit’s first VR experience “Wallace & Gromit in The Grand Getaway”, co-produced by Aardman and Atlas V in association with No Ghost and Albyon, and distributed by Astrea has just been nominated for a 2024 Emmy Award in the Outstanding Emerging Media Program category.
A Very Crazy Golf Adventure
The new course will be available for $3.99 USD/£3.16 pound sterling as an add-on to Walkabout Mini Golf (on Meta Quest 2/Pro/3, PlayStation VR2, Steam, and PICO platforms (and soon on iOS devices via Walkabout Mini Golf: Pocket Edition). Mighty Coconut has announced that there are still three more courses coming in 2024 to be followed by “Walkabout Mini Golf: Viva Las Elvis” in early 2025 as part of a full slate of releases in 2025. Many more modes and features are also starting to show up in the game along with licensed cosmetic packs including ones themed to Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Exploding Kittens.Mighty Coconut launched Walkabout Mini Golf on the Meta Quest in the fall of 2020 and it has steadily grown to be a player favorite and system seller, with a nearly perfect five-star rating with over 12,000 reviews on Meta Quest—making it the best-rated multiplayer game on Quest and Steam platforms as well as a top 10 selling PlayStation VR2 title since launch. Player engagement boasts a 2-Hour Usage Rate for more than 50% of users (around 10 times the standard), meaning they play Walkabout Mini Golf until their battery runs out. Hundreds of thousands of intergenerational players from over 40 countries meet in the game regularly to play mini golf, to catch up, and to make new memories together.