Who needs a social network if you have a hand?
A new feature announced on April Fools’ Day in Walkabout Mini Golf means you’ll never have to be alone again in VR. Just turn your putter into a sock puppet.
I tested grip-to-puppet for real.
Double The Roleplay
Grip-to-Putt is the original Walkabout Mini Golf feature that requires the grip button on a VR controller to be pressed in order to hit the ball. It’s a useful way of ensuring you don’t accidentally lose a stroke by hitting it when you didn’t mean to.
Grip-to-Putter, meanwhile, is an accessory now in its third generation that presses that button while giving the feel of a club in your hand.
In Grip-to-Puppet, when you press that grip button/trigger Walkabout’s developers access something deep inside.
“The puppet has been inside of you all along,” Mighty Coconut 3D artist Emma Mercado explained between heaves of laughter. “So you don’t need much to access it.”
I met recently with Mercado and Mighty Coconut communications head David Wyatt, with three sock puppets featuring red stripes around their necks talking with us intermittently.
In 2017, I reported on the idea of Puppeteering in VRChat as a cool idea. Now again in 2025, the idea resurfaces in Walkabout Mini Golf as a feature anyone can try.
My sock puppet asked Mercado: “Am I going to have a lot of options for representation?”
“This is kind of a joke that ended up not being a joke,” she replied. “And so we’re waiting to see how well it is received, but we do have other potential options if folks like it.”
During my brief time testing this with professionals Wyatt and Mercado, our puppets made sounds I’ve never heard people make in social VR before. I also laughed more than I ever have in social VR.
“You’ve got two levels of separation from whoever you’re trying to be, and so it makes it easier to just play,” Mercado explained. “And I think that’s a big part of Walkabout is just making play as accessible as possible.”
The feature has been on the back burner for years, Mercado suggested, and Walkabout’s original creator Lucas Martell explained how the new activity fits into a series of steady updates to the project over the last year.
“A majority of players spend a significant portion of their time doing an activity other than golf,” Martell wrote. “The lost balls and fox hunts have been two of the most popular aspects of the game from very early on. Even non-gamified elements like flying, riding on moving objects, or playing with the beach ball on Welcome Island have proven to be big hits. Some of the newest additions to the game have given us more ways to let players experience these worlds, whether that’s golfing in race mode, hitting some slingshot targets while you wait for your friends, or discovering the employees-only rooms throughout the game. Grip-To-Puppet in particular is a fun social experiment, and we can’t wait to see what players use it for.”
You can take a tour of one of Walkabout’s courses in our Design playlist or read Don Carson’s principles of course design for a deeper look into the ideas which shape the game as it continues to grow.
Cultivating Magic: The Art And Principles Of Walkabout Mini Golf Course Design
Mighty Coconut’s Don Carson shares the principles for course design in Walkabout Mini Golf.
