Walkabout’s Latest Attraction Adds Playable Chess

Chess is playable in Walkabout Mini Golf starting this Wednesday.

The playable activity is initially available in the VR version of the game in Upside Town and Venice, as well as in the Welcome Island.

The tabletop game joins a steadily growing list of activities inside Walkabout that can be played whether or not you engage with the core game of mini golf. In recent months the developers added slingshots, leaf blowers and bug nets to various areas, joining the existing hidden ball and “fox” hunts. Die-hard fans may have also noticed the stairs inside the shack on Welcome Island leading to an underground area styled as if it is for employees, with new areas opening up down there connecting to secret rooms all over the game.

With chess, Walkabout opens up its universe to tabletop board games. There’s no comment yet from Mighty Coconut on whether they’ve got other tabletop games queued up yet, but you can use the menu on a course like Venice to quickly teleport to the chess board where you replace your club for a hand. Just pull the trigger to grab a piece and place it somewhere else on the board. There appears to be no enforced turn order or rulesets, so you can play with custom rules if you wanted.

Developers say the game board and pieces will retain their state in a multiplayer room as long as there’s a player in it. In other words, the board will reset when the room isn’t occupied. For players who use standalone headsets with streaming PCs to play a game like Walkabout, one could hypothetically leave a private room open on their PC and just put on the headset when they hear their friend enter the virtual room already open on there. It’d be a lot of work and wasted electricity to dedicate a PC for just this purpose, but a universe sounds nice that exists just for a friendly game of chess in Venice.

Which tabletop game do you want to see Walkabout add support for next? Let us know in the comments below.