Untitled Goose Game Team's Big Walk Hits PS Plus Day One

House House has been quiet since Untitled Goose Game turned a horrible goose into one of gaming's most beloved characters back in 2019. Seven years later, the Melbourne studio's follow-up is arriving in a way nobody expected: straight into PlayStation Plus on launch day, free for every tier of subscriber.

Big Walk leads August's PS Plus Essential lineup, announced today on the PlayStation Blog. It's joined by Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition on PS5 and PS4, and Signalis on PS4. All three will be available to download from August 4.

A brand-new indie game dropping into PS Plus on day one is still rare enough to turn heads. Sony has done it before with bigger-budget titles, but slotting a small studio's passion project directly into the service sends a clear message about how much confidence both House House and Sony have in Big Walk finding an audience this way. I think it's a smart call. Co-op games live or die on player count, and nothing fills servers faster than removing the price barrier entirely.

What Is Big Walk?

According to House House and publisher Panic, Big Walk is a "long-form cooperative multiplayer" adventure built around teamwork and talking. The developers describe it as "both a big adventure, and a nice place to hang out," with every activity designed for co-op play. It's meant to be played with the same group across multiple sessions rather than matchmaking with strangers.

"Big Walk is a long-form cooperative game. It's made to be played with the same group over multiple sessions, so it doesn't make sense to throw strangers together randomly. We think it's a much better experience to organize and play Big Walk with people you know, or people you want to know better."

That philosophy of deliberate, friend-group co-op feels refreshing when so many multiplayer games are obsessed with matchmaking queues and ranked ladders. Big Walk supports cross-play across PS5, Mac, Nintendo Switch 2, and Windows PC, so pulling a group together shouldn't be difficult regardless of platform.

The rest of August's lineup is strong in its own right. Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition brings Techland's 2022 zombie parkour game to subscribers in its most complete form, bundling the expanded arsenal and more than 10 post-launch updates into one package. It launched to mixed feelings about its story but widespread praise for its combat and traversal, and the Reloaded Edition represents the version Techland probably wished it had shipped from the start. It's available on both PS5 and PS4.

Signalis Deserves Your Time

Then there's Signalis, and if you haven't played it yet, this is the month. Rose-engine's 2022 survival horror game draws from Resident Evil and Silent Hill with a retro sci-fi aesthetic that feels entirely its own. You play as Elster, a Replika android searching for her lost companion through an abandoned underground facility crawling with corrupted androids. It's tense, melancholic, and packed with obscure endings that reward multiple playthroughs. As someone who thinks horror games are chronically underrepresented in these monthly lineups, seeing Signalis here makes me happy. It's one of the best indie horror games of the last five years, and PS Plus is about to put it in front of millions of people who might have missed it.

Signalis is PS4 only, so PS5 owners will be playing through backward compatibility.

Sony is also throwing in a bonus for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, which launches on August 6. Starting August 16, all PlayStation Plus members can claim a free pack containing five PSN avatars based on Captain America, Storm, Spider-Man, Doctor Doom, and Ghost Rider, plus a set of in-game Result Screen character poses for all 20 characters. That pack stays available until August 6, 2027.

July's PS Plus Essential games, which include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, For the King 2, and CrossCode, remain available through August 3. August's three games go live the following day and can be claimed through August 31.