AUSTIN, Texas — On the heels of the release this week of their gravity-defying latest DLC course Walkabout Mini Golf: Upside Town, Mighty Coconut—an independent entertainment studio based in Austin—today announced plans to vastly expand the universe of their popular Walkabout Mini Golf virtual reality game including an innovative creative collaboration with Meow Wolf for a transformative new course coming in Q3, the addition of an AR-powered version for iOS coming this summer, and deals to bring the title to hundreds of arcades in the location based entertainment industry. 

The plans expand on the studio’s strategy of quirky accessibility, building on Walkabout Mini Golf’s seventeen and counting courses which feature immersive gameplay with realistic physics, and iconic settings, enjoyed as a favored social, virtual meeting place and solo-zen hangout by hundreds of thousands of players who gather in the game weekly from over 40 nations. 

Putting Through a Portal
For the game’s third licensed course, Mighty Coconut has partnered with Meow Wolf—the perspective-shifting arts and entertainment company that inspires audiences to explore creative possibility and storytelling through their exhibitions in Santa Fe, Denver, Las Vegas, and soon Grapevine and Houston, Texas. The Meow Wolf course for Walkabout Mini Golf will punch a portal in the multiverse traveling to VR, mobile, and physical locations this summer. 

Whereas the 2022 courses based on Jim Henson’s LABYRINTH film and Cyan’s classic video game MYST were interpretive in nature—expanding on familiar properties, “Walkabout Mini Golf: Meow Wolf” is an innovative collaboration between studios, with hands on creation by Meow Wolf co-founder and senior creative director Caity Kennedy alongside the Mighty Coconut team. The course will be based on a central world in the Meow Wolf Denver location called Numina— a sentient universe attempting to communicate in the peculiar language of mini golf. 

“The mechanics of virtual reality are just another set of physics for Numina to play within. Collaborating with Walkabout has given us the opportunity to encounter Numina in digital space” said Kennedy, “Meow Wolf—and Numina—are now everywhere, and we can’t wait for all of our trans-dimentional friends to discover the playful ways Numina has rearranged mini golf to mess with our minds!”

The downloadable content (DLC) course will be a vivid, quizzical, and beautiful course for players where they can escape, explore, and play solo or rendezvous with up to seven other players for 18 easy mode and 18 hard mode holes—complete with iconic Meow Wolf objects, settings, and surprises. There will also be 18 lost balls to find and a “foxhunt” scavenger expedition as well as a virtual, commemorative putter to collect.

A Sleeper System Seller
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 sleeper system seller, with a nearly perfect five-star rating with nearly 10,000 reviews on Meta Quest—making it the best-rated multiplayer game on Quest and Steam platforms. 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. 

In Q2 2023, the studio will launch Walkabout Mini Golf: Pocket Edition, enabling anyone with a modern phone to enjoy an augmented reality-powered version of the VR hit game—including full cross-play with people they know on other mobile devices, Quest and Steam VR, PSVR 2, PICO, and HTC Viveport. The novel approach to AR uses the phone itself as a putter, gently moving their device to play in a way that feels remarkably accurate and lifelike. 

“Partnering with Meow Wolf with their vivid palette of places and ideas is something that has our team really pushing the bounds of what is possible with mini golf and VR/AR,” said Lucas Martell, executive producer and head of Mighty Coconut. “The addition of Walkabout Mini Golf: Pocket Edition really opens up the possibilities for who can discover these worlds and how. With the millions of visitors who come through Meow Wolf’s physical spaces, we’re welcoming in an exponential number of players in 2023 and beyond. Our goal is to be the first experience for VR/AR everywhere—and the default place to return. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to try out Walkabout Mini Golf, show their friends and spend time hanging out virtually with loved ones.”

Location Based Entertainment 
Pushing far beyond the home, where players have customarily enjoyed the virtual reality experience, Mighty Coconut’s partnerships with Synthesis VR, CTRL-V, and The Cave NZ—among other arcade chains—signals the game’s position as perhaps the best experience for players of all ages trying out VR/AR but also one they are known to return to time and again. Walkabout Mini Golf’s curated social experience with a self-paced, intergenerational appeal has attracted advanced and novice players alike. The New York Times called Walkabout Mini Golf “an adorable mini-golf game that is unexpectedly convincing” and the Washington Post’s review heralded the title as “A magnificent collection of challenging holes set in fantasy locations”.

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