Big Walk Items: Walkie-Talkie, Megaphone, Gourd and Key

Updated 2026-09-03 · Steam Big Walk

Big Walk items are handheld objects that solve the game's real problem: staying in touch with people you cannot see. The community wiki sorts them into light, communication, navigation, bags, progression and miscellaneous, and almost every one of them is picked up loose from the island rather than crafted or bought. You carry one item in your hands, and the only way to carry more is to have a teammate strap a backpack or a hip bag onto you. This page lists what each item does and where it turns up.

Everything below is drawn from the community Fandom wiki, player-written Steam guides and House House's own patch notes. The developers describe items obliquely in patch notes to avoid spoilers, so where a note is matched to a specific item that match is flagged as an inference, not an official name.

Every item at a glance

Item	Group	What it does	Where it is found
Buoy	Light	Handheld light that glows in every direction, yellow or red	Small podiums scattered around the island; also in the tutorial area
Directional torch	Light	Beams light forward from where you are looking	Ground floor of the towers
Flashlight	Light	A focused beam rather than ambient glow	No fixed spawn confirmed; player-reported finds after the drawbridge, near tunnel entrances, or loose
Walkie-talkie	Communication	Long-range voice and text between two paired handsets	Four paired holder sites plus a bonus unit, player-counted at eight total
Megaphone	Communication	Pushes your voice much further than proximity chat	Three yellow stepped pedestals, each needing a boost from a teammate
Whiteboard	Communication	You type on it and other players read it	Outside the Map Room, plus one behind the GPS
Cowbell	Communication	Makes a ringing sound when used	Tutorial Zone
Handheld radio	Communication	Plays music channels you have unlocked	Picked up with the first transmitter at the Crosswalk
Flare gun	Navigation	Fires a flare that marks your position, and doubles as a light because the burst glows red as it fades	Spawn not confirmed yet; no source lists a fixed pickup spot
Binoculars	Navigation	Zooms your view for spotting distant landmarks	Top floor of the towers
Compass	Navigation	Shows the four cardinal directions	Map Room
Map	Navigation	Shows the whole island	On a table in the Map Room
GPS	Navigation	Displays your horizontal coordinates	Near the Green Tower
Laser pointer	Navigation	Fires a red beam for pointing at faraway things	Tower tops and the Map Room
Item scanner	Miscellaneous	Picks up nearby items as yellow marks that fade with distance	Tower ground floors, plus one near the Starting Area flare
Paintbrush	Miscellaneous	Recolours another player's head, torso or legs	The Customization Room easel
Backpack	Bags	One extra item slot, worn on the back	Blue ringed structures across the island
Hip bag	Bags	A further slot, player-reported as small items only	The same blue ringed structures
Gourd	Progression	The reward for solving a puzzle; fills tower slots	Puzzles all over the island
Key	Progression	Unlocks a route or a transport system once filed	Granted when a location's gourd slots are all full

How carrying actually works

Your hands hold exactly one item. That single limit is what makes the walkie-talkie interesting: a player-written locations guide points out that holding one means you cannot also hold binoculars or a flare, which is why groups usually split a pair and give one handset to each half of the party.

Bags are the workaround, and they are deliberately awkward. Backpacks and hip bags sit inside blue circular structures that one Steam guide compares to small parking garages, and neither can be put on or taken off by the wearer. Someone else has to attach the bag, and someone else has to take the item out again. Players report that a backpack accepts any item size while a hip bag or belt takes only small things such as a radio or a walkie-talkie. The same achievement guide reports that a one-off item sits where the Weather Balloon is anchored, up north of the Green and Blue towers; players say it clips onto a backpack and lets you carry one extra gourd. More on slots and the drop mechanic is on belt and inventory.

Falling a long way dazes you and knocks your held item loose. That behaviour is documented indirectly, in the description of a community mod written specifically to remove it, and a flashlight guide notes the same thing happens to a flashlight when you tumble.

Light, and why the buoy is the default

The buoy is the most accessible light source in the game because the podiums holding them are everywhere, including the pits of them in the Tutorial Zone. Yellow and red variants tint the light they give off. Directional torches and flashlights throw a beam instead, which is better for reading a distant sign and worse for lighting the ground around a group.

Flashlights are the one item with no reliable answer. A player-written locations guide says there is no single guaranteed spawn: some groups find one after the drawbridge sequence, some near tunnel entrances after finishing the Yellow Tower, some loose elsewhere, and the number per playthrough is not consistent either. The same guide's conclusion is that you never need one, because the tutorial-area lights cover the early game. Treat all of that as player-reported.

Communication items

Proximity voice drops off with distance by design; House House said so directly in the 1.4.8 patch post, explaining that the drop-off distance was left unchanged even while quiet microphones were boosted. The communication items exist to beat that distance.

Walkie-talkies carry voice and text at unlimited range between a paired blue and yellow handset. Players count eight units in total, spread over holders at the Peak, at Ocean Treasure, at Back Beach Hill and down on the Beach, with one spare sitting on a platform underneath the Blue Tower. Lose a handset and it is reported to reappear close to whichever holder it came from.
Megaphones widen the radius your voice reaches. Patch 1.5.1 on 28 August 2026 lists a change making the item that amplifies your voice reach further, which is almost certainly the megaphone. Spots are on megaphone locations.
Whiteboards are the text option. One player guide about drawing on them reports a seven-line limit, text stored as a single overflowing line with no manual line breaks, and a centred non-monospace font. Patch 1.5.1 also fixed shadows breaking when an item that shows messages was placed in a backpack.
Handheld radios play channels rather than carrying your voice. Seven transmitters unlock seven channels permanently; see radio locations.
Cowbells are the tutorial-grade version, and hand signals cover the case where you have nothing at all.

Navigation and finding things

The map and compass are a pair, and both live in the Map Room, which players report is gated behind the Red Tower key. The GPS reads out coordinates and is not decoration: the community wiki documents a puzzle whose sign reads 4166 1899, and those digits are a location you walk to with the GPS in hand. Laser pointers work at any range for pointing at a specific rock, or straight up as a flare substitute when you are lost. The item scanner shows nearby objects as marks that dissolve as you move away; patch 1.4.10 on 21 August 2026 lists a small sound change to the item that lets you find other items, which matches the scanner.

Gourds, keys and progress

Gourds are the currency of progress, and many players call them blorbs. Puzzles produce them, and filling every slot at a tower releases a key. The community wiki notes the name gourd is not spoken in game and comes from developer files. Keys are not usable straight away: filers clustered near the towers cut a peg at a time, and after each cut the filer points an arrow at the next one, with five filers needed per key. An achievement guide reports the payoffs as Red for the Map Room, Green for the chairlift, Yellow for the tunnel network, Blue for the trains, and the Black tower opening only after the other four. Puzzle types are broken down on puzzles and the buildings themselves on towers.

Toys and the paintbrush

Not every item advances anything. The paintbrush only works properly in the Customization Room, where a wall of paint swatches, counted at 21 by the community wiki, colours the brush tip. Click a swatch, then click a teammate's head, torso or legs. You cannot paint yourself, which is the joke. Full mechanics are on painting station. The Steam store page itself frames binoculars as much a toy as a tool, suggesting you steal a friend's pair and kick them into the ocean.

Sources and last check

Checked 3 September 2026. Item names, groupings, effects and most spawn descriptions come from the community Big Walk wiki at big-walk-game.fandom.com, chiefly its Items, Key, Gourd, Buoy, Paintbrush, Towers and Miscellaneous pages. Walkie-talkie counts and holder names, megaphone pedestal counts, flashlight spawn behaviour, bag slot rules, the Weather Balloon carry item, whiteboard text limits and tower unlock payoffs are player-reported, taken from Steam Community guides including the walkie-talkie locations guide, the interactive map guide and the 100 percent achievement guide, and none of it is confirmed by House House. Patch details come from the official Steam announcements for 1.5.1 (28 August 2026), 1.4.10 (21 August 2026) and 1.4.8 (7 August 2026); those notes name items obliquely, so the matches to megaphone, whiteboard, item scanner and flare gun are this wiki's reading rather than official labels. Game facts such as the release date and price come from the Steam store page.