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Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace & Gromit will be released on July 25th as the latest DLC for the currently smash-hit multiplayer virtual reality game.
Walkabout Mini Golf’s creators, Mighty Coconut, have teamed up with franchise creators Aardman to bring the silly Wallace and Gromit characters to the VR golf title’s new courses, and adding DLC like this has helped Walkabout Mini Golf remain a going strong VR title since 2020.
The goal is to push the boundaries of technology, create a low-poly art style and inspire players’ imaginations of what’s possible, Daniel Efergan, Aardman’s interactive creative director, said in an interview with GamesBeat.
“The Mighty Coconuts’ animation roots combined with Aardman’s animation reputation resulted in a really interactive course,” Efergan said. “It’s a big, beautiful world with lots of interactive gadgets. It was really challenging.”
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Following courses based on The Jim Henson Company’s Labyrinth, Cyan’s Mist and Meow Wolf, the latest collaboration brings players to a very familiar location: 62 West Wallaby Street.
Here, Wallace and Gromit’s industrious spirit comes to life as players explore their beloved homes and gardens – emblematic of how the 100% independent studio behind the game has put innovation at the heart of a simple strategy, Efergan said.
This isn’t Wallace and Gromit’s first foray into VR: the duo also starred in Wallace & Gromit’s Great Escape, which debuted on Meta Quest in December and featured a mixed reality experience called Jamtastic.
There are some learnings to be made regarding previous Wallace and Gromit games.
“That was a different team, and it was kind of a lovely, happy coincidence,” Efergan says, “and these discussions started when that was already in production, so we moved onto this.”
There were some learnings to be made, like how big a coffee mug would need to be in VR to fit into Wallace’s gigantic hand.
“We had to figure out how to right-size things,” he said.
Aardman and The Mighty Coconut collaboration
Aardman brings Wallace and Gromit to Walkabout Minigolf.
Mighty Coconut started as an animation studio in 2014, following the award-winning short film The Oceanmaker from Walkabout Mini Golf creator Lucas Martell. The company’s success in the virtual reality gaming space is largely due to its roots in animation and storytelling, and the production discipline of episodic television, which is evident in the first few dozen mini golf worlds it launched.
Developed in collaboration with Aardman, the 27th course pushes animation and technical skills to their limits, with a tenfold increase in moving interactive devices, characters and other elements, pushing modern VR platforms and hardware to their limits to deliver a surprisingly simple yet incredibly fun experience.
The game has hundreds of thousands of active users, many who play about once a month, some who play daily, many who play for hours until their headset batteries die, and even older players who play with their adult children or college friends.
“We’re seeing play patterns where people come weekly or monthly with friends, coworkers or family,” Efergan said. “They want to come back.”
Mighty Coconuts spokesman David Wyatt said a community has formed around the game, which is what keeps players engaged and coming back to it.
“People love to come and hang out with their friends,” he says. “It’s the opposite of most gaming communities, where the top players rule. They really need each other, they’re loud, they’re boastful. Our community is about people helping each other and teaching each other.”
Great real-life experience
In Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace and Gromit, Wallace is reading the newspaper.
Both studios said they were excited by the idea that this mini golf adventure will feel like a very real part of the Wallace & Gromit film universe, for long-time fans and new audiences alike.
Meanwhile, Aardman has not only licensed the rights to 62 West Wallaby Street, Wallace and Gromit and Feathers McGraw, as well as the gadgets featured in the award-winning films, but Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park has also contributed idea sketches for a mini golf hall.
Additionally, the course features the voice of Ben Whitehead, who has been the voice of Wallace since he first appeared in Wallace & Gromit: The Adventures of Wallace & Gromit in 2009. Players will be immersed in a whirlwind of ingenious twists that will delight die-hard fans and curious newbies alike.
The release of the new courses comes at a time when Mighty Coconut is adding more and more content and experiences with each release, including new game modes, avatar packs, and upcoming surprise features.
These enhancements create an engaging, persistent gaming experience where players can come together, play against themselves or others, and choose different adventures together.
The new Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace & Gromit Course will be released today at 11am CST and will include 18 easy and hard mode holes, specially designed collectible lost balls, a commemorative in-game putter, themed avatars and more.
But unlike the previous 26 courses, Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace & Gromit will require players to use (or avoid) an array of thematic contraptions found in Wallace and Gromit’s minds to make putts under par.
The first Wallace & Gromit VR experience was Wallace & Gromit’s Great Escape, co-produced by Aardman and Atlas V in partnership with No Ghost and Albion and distributed by Astrea. It was just nominated for a 2024 Emmy Award in the Outstanding Emerging Media Program category.
A very crazy golf adventure
The Wallace and Gromit course will be an additional $3.99 to Walkabout Mini Golf.
The new courses will be available as a $3.99 add-on to Walkabout Mini Golf, available 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 three more courses will be coming in 2024, followed by Walkabout Mini Golf: Viva Las Elvis in early 2025 as part of its planned release schedule. More modes and features are starting to appear in the game, as well as licensed cosmetic packs, including ones themed around Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Exploding Kittens.
Mighty Coconut released Walkabout Mini Golf on Meta Quest in Fall 2020. The game has steadily become a player favorite and driving sales for the system, garnering a near-perfect 5-star rating from over 12,000 reviews on Meta Quest, making it the highest-rated multiplayer game on the Quest and Steam platforms, as well as a top 10 selling title for PlayStation VR2 since release.
Player engagement is such that over 50% of users have a 2-hour usage rate (nearly 10 times the standard) and will play Walkabout Mini Golf until their battery dies. Hundreds of thousands of multi-generational players from over 40 countries regularly flock to the game to play mini golf, catch up, and make new memories together.
Development details
Gromit is a beagle and a character in the Wallace and Gromit series.
It took a team of several dozen people about 15 months to complete. The course was created in partnership with Aardman in Bristol, U.K. The Aardman team attended Meow Wolf’s launch event at SXSW in 2023, held at Peter Pan Mini Golf. They loved the atmosphere and the players who attended so much that they asked to discuss a collaboration, despite never having experienced Walkabout Mini Golf before.
The course features 10 times more animation than Mighty Coconut has ever put into any of its courses to date, thanks to the gadgets, creatures and gags that fill 62 West Wallaby Street.
Players will encounter many characters, creatures (including plenty of sheep), scenes, gags and other references from Aardman’s classic films, as well as new inventions and holes inspired by Nick Park’s sketches, notably from Crazy Golf.
Might Coconut had a keen sense for environmental storytelling, where the story unfolded in a VR environment, and the two companies engaged in what they called a co-production.
Whitehead has been voicing Wallace since he first voiced him in Wallace & Gromit: The Rescue in 2009. Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park provided the team with design ideas for the mini golf hole, and players will see the familiar windmill design in their garden.
The Mighty Coconuts took on the challenge of putting together the home at 62 West Wallaby St. in a way that had never been done before, and its layout presented the Walkabout team with a puzzle that even Aardman couldn’t quite pull off.
Walkabout Minigolf: Wallace and Gromit’s putter rental hut.
When Efergan joined Aardman, he was asked, “How can we leverage the fans, kids and adults, that flock to these websites?” The answer was games. A few years ago, Aardman made a lot of Flash games, but interactive content was just a marketing tool.
They then moved on to developing an app, but Efergan said they “struggled to tell a good story and a well-crafted experience where the world had a beginning, middle and end, rather than a continuous loop.” Aardman then looked for outside partners to work on developing the game for consoles, PC and XR.
“At XR, we’ll admit that we’re still struggling to find an audience,” Efergan said. “We’re [Mighty Coconut] “But we want to bring a lot of interactive storytelling into the future. This is kind of our experimentation space.”
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