A year of surprises, gratitude, and fun!??

Before 2022 goes bouncing off the course and into the abyss, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on what has been, by all accounts, a phenomenal year for Mighty Coconut. This year, we more than doubled the size of our team, put out five new courses?totaling fifteen altogether—and a new “Welcome Island”, finally got to meet some of our players IRL, and so much more.?

Needless to say, we couldn’t have done it without the talent and passion of Coconuts as well as the players, platforms, and anyone who tells our story. We’re so grateful to have this opportunity. We're so grateful to have the opportunity, and we’re just getting started! Here are our top ten moments from 2022:

10. Playing Walkabout Mini Golf for good

This year, we were humbled to have our game be the place and means for charity tournaments for impactful causes, raising tens of thousands for Children's Cancer Research Fund, Center for Puppetry Arts, Feed the Children, Alzheimer's, et al.

9. Meeting people from all over IRL

Since we launched during the lockdown, we hadn’t yet had a chance to meet our players, but this year afforded us the chance to partner with Dave & Buster’s, Comicpalooza, University of California Davis, Game’s Y’all, Gamescom with Pico, and others to bring our game to the people and to hear from them directly. We also?were invited to Jim Henson Studios?and?Cyan’s Headquarters?to collaborate with the creators with whom we got to partner. Every interaction was so meaningful!

8. So much ink and pixels

We were taken totally by surprise when Walkabout Mini Golf launched in September 2020 to quickly become a player favorite, but nothing could prepare us for the amount of press love that has come our way this past year.?Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Forbes, CNET, TechRadar, VentureBeat, BoingBoing, ScreenRant, and so many others took the time to write about the game and we’re so appreciative!

7. Welcome to Welcome Island

Because meeting up with friends, colleagues, and loved ones in the game became such a favorite feature, we decided it was the time to re-think the main menu experience. Hence, “Welcome Island” emerged as a place to practice putting, driving target practice, chilling on a raft, and sidling up to the shack for a growing list of courses and other fun features.?

6. Pushing what’s possible

Part of the joy of making Walkabout Mini Golf is that people seem to enjoy the intuitive simplicity of the gameplay and chill vibe of the environments—created in our signature “low poly” style. But what isn’t evident to most is that we’re working very hard to push the performance capabilities of modern headsets for very large, open, multiplayer worlds that are also cross-play with a growing number of platforms. The creature animations, interactivity, lighting feats, and just generally pushing our toolset to allow us to create bigger and more elaborate worlds.

5. Top rating on Quest and Steam

Like a lot of other things, rankings can be gamed, but we were so proud this year to organically be rated as the number 1 best-rated multiplayer game for Meta Quest and Steam VR, making us the most liked social experience in virtual reality.

4. Talkabouts and OST

At some point in 2022, somebody coined the phrase “Walkabout isn’t a game. It’s a place.” And that was the idea behind our interview series?Walkabout Talkabouts, the initial 10 episodes of which have garnered thousands of views and it is now available?in podcast format. We also dropped our first album—the original soundtrack—this year with a collection of Chris Reyman’s beautiful scores for our first dozen courses. The number 4 country streaming it… Luxembourg.

3. Stuff!

While getting into?the merchandise business?was definitely not on our bingo card for 2022, we did it not for the income, but instead for player celebration. We were surprised to find out that when you wear a Walkabout shirt or hoodie out into the world, people will stop you like you are a member of some sort of secret society.?

2. Making it all work

As any small business owner will tell you, it ain’t all golf balls and coffee mugs. Re-configuring our studio for virtual reality, and building a team that spans three continents with myriad, mind-bending skillsets has been a worthy challenge, but we’re grateful for the team, partners, platforms, and players who have put their trust in us and come along for this ride.?

1. Creating places that bring people joy

Sweetopia, Welcome Island, El Dorado, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Cyan’s Myst… lovingly built by hand, each of these courses was imagined, sketched, then carved out, designed, honed, colored, animated, lit, tested, and launched in 2023—while we started on just as many (and more) for 2023. These are fun and fanciful VR mini golf courses, but we’ve come to understand that these are also places people make memories with pals, reconnect with their parents, fall in love, have big ideas, and just make a little time for themselves. Knowing the hundreds of thousands of people across 40 nations are finding such joy in the places we create, that gives us a great sense of satisfaction and profound pride.?

Thank you for playing, keep on putting, and let's cheers to 2023!