How to get shiny in Big Walk: the Big Makeover achievement, and why you cannot do it alone

What shiny actually means

Shiny is not a costume you find or a colour you pick at the start. It is metallic paint — bronze, silver or gold — applied to your character from a studio hidden inside the island's tunnel network.

The achievement attached to it is Big Makeover, and its rarity tells you how off the beaten path it is: 3.8% of Steam owners have it, well below the achievements on either side of it. That gap is not difficulty. It is that nothing points you towards the studio, so almost everyone who gets there was looking for it.

It is entirely optional. Nothing about finishing the game requires being shiny, which is exactly why so few people are.

You cannot get there until the yellow tower is done

The studio sits behind the tunnel network, and the tunnels stay shut until your group clears the yellow tower.

Clearing it means carrying five of the red puzzle rewards up to the top of the tower, which shapes the key that opens the tunnels. Worth noting for anyone tracking their collection: those five are spent. The towers consume the red rewards, which is why groups who assume every one they pick up is banked for the ending end up short.

So the order is fixed. Yellow tower first, key second, tunnels third, studio last. There is no shortcut into the studio for a group that has skipped ahead.

The route to the paint studio

From the large red circular hub where every session starts, go through the opening to the right of the map room. Follow the path with the unclimbable rock wall on your left for roughly thirty seconds, until a red tunnel entrance appears.

Take a flashlight in with you. Inside, climb the long staircase and follow the corridors as their colour changes — blue, then red, then yellow. Turn left at the blue corridor and keep heading upward through the shifting colours until you reach a staircase with purple walls.

Then go down. All the way to the bottom of that purple staircase is the studio, with the bronze, silver and gold paint waiting.

• Start — the large red circular hub where sessions begin
• Through — the opening to the right of the map room
• About 30 seconds with the rock wall on your left, to a red tunnel entrance
• Up the long staircase, left at the blue corridor, keep climbing
• Find the purple-walled staircase and descend to the bottom

Somebody else has to hold the brush

This is the part that catches people who make the whole trip alone. The paintbrush cannot be used on your own character. A second player has to pick it up and apply it to you.

If you have read our page on backpacks this will sound familiar, because it is the same idea again: you cannot reach your own back either. Big Walk keeps building small dependencies that only resolve when somebody is standing next to you, and being painted is one more of them.

The practical version is simple. Bring at least one other person into the studio, and take turns. One painted body part is enough to unlock the achievement, so nobody needs a full metallic makeover unless they want one — though groups tend to want one. A photo of three shiny characters drew 84 upvotes on the subreddit, posted by someone who had just done the yellow tower with the people in it.

Plan the trip before you set off

The studio run has a shape that is easy to get wrong, and getting it wrong costs a second walk rather than a retry.

Bring a light. The tunnels are dark enough that groups turn back for one, and the route is long enough that turning back means most of the way. Bring at least two people, because of the brush. And do it while the yellow tower key is fresh, when everyone is already near the entrance.

The corridors change colour as you climb, which is the only signposting you get — blue, red, yellow on the way up, and a purple staircase at the point where you stop climbing and start descending. If nothing has changed colour for a while, you have drifted off the route.

One last thing worth saying to a group that is achievement-hunting rather than sightseeing: nobody needs to be fully coated. One part is the trigger, so the fastest version of this is everyone taking one stroke each and walking back out.

This is not the same as changing your colour

There is a separate, much easier thing people confuse with this, and it is worth separating because the searches look identical.

If what you want is simply to be purple every session, you do not need the tunnels at all. There is a painting puzzle out in the open in the centre of the starting zone, and that is where ordinary character colours are handled. A player asked exactly this on the subreddit and the answer was that one line.

So: ordinary colour lives at the starting zone in plain sight. Metallic shine lives at the bottom of a purple staircase behind a tower you have to finish first. Only the second one unlocks Big Makeover.

Why only 3.8% have it

Compare it with the achievements either side and the gap stops looking like difficulty. Riding the chairlift is at 34%. Entering a big tunnel is at 18.7%. Getting shiny sits at 3.8%, well under the rate for simply being in the tunnels at all.

So the people who reach the tunnels mostly do not reach the studio. Nothing in the game points at it, the route branches several times, and the reward is cosmetic — three good reasons for a group mid-run to keep walking towards whatever they were already doing.

That is also why it is a satisfying one to have. Almost everybody who holds it went looking on purpose, usually because somebody read about it first.

Is it worth the trip?

For an achievement, it is one of the better ones, because the walk itself is content. The tunnel route passes through the colour-shifting corridors that most groups only see a fragment of on their way somewhere else.

For a group counting evenings, it is a detour rather than progress. Nothing about the ending or the collection depends on it, and the five red rewards you spend on the yellow tower are needed for the tower regardless.

The honest recommendation: do it on the same session you finish the yellow tower, while everyone is already near the tunnels and the key is fresh. Coming back for it later means a second walk for a cosmetic.