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Big Walk is a new game from Portland-based Panic. Locals can sign up to demo the co-op adventure at its downtown office.
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ByVideo game publisher Panic’s headquarters is an office out of time.
To step into the company’s 7,000 square feet on the third floor of one of the West End’s newest high-rises, 11W, is to emerge into a leafy Silicon Forest of the 2010s, when tech firms were fueling a resurgence in downtown Portland.
That’s when Portland’s startup culture helped buoy the city’s office market, as upstarts like online banker Simple, social networking pioneer Jive Software and business software firm Puppet Labs occupied large spaces downtown or nearby. Big tech companies such as eBay, Google and New Relic soon established large outposts, too.
While Google and eBay still retain downtown offices, New Relic has largely moved on. Puppet sold its business, Simple shut down and many other Portland tech firms have either downsized or have doubled down on remote work. Traditional white-collar firms left or downsized, too, leaving more than a third of downtown’s offices empty.
Panic is among those who still see value downtown. It signed a lease in 2023 to occupy 11W, moving its few dozen employees from West Burnside. From its mirror-ceilinged pad, Panic has been playing unintentional spokesperson for downtown in recent weeks by inviting games journalists to its 11W offices to demo a new game it is publishing, “Big Walk.”
“Big Walk” is by House House, the same developer whose “Untitled Goose Game” — where players honk havoc and let slip a goose to terrorize the game’s poor village folk — shot the companies to indie stardom in 2019.
Panic has published many other indies since and created the retro-inspired Playdate video game console. In a side room, co-founder Cabel Sasser shows off piled fan mail and gamers’ endearing doodles to the publisher, including from one of its most recent titles, “Thank Goodness You’re Here!”
Down the hall is where journalists have been trying out its latest for PlayStation 5 and PC, “Big Walk,” out later this year. Two to 12 players walk, talk and cooperate to solve puzzles in a fauna and hillocked bushland (House House is based in Australia). A demo by two reporters from The Oregonian/OregonLive showed how the game distilled the two best parts of co-op gaming: goofing off and shooting the pixel breeze. We ended by seeing how far out into the map’s ocean we could swim before paddling into the game’s invisible boundaries.
If Panic pushes up against what’s expected of a Portland tech company in 2026, it plays to type in other ways. His back to the “Capax Infiniti” mural, Sasser says he still treasures Portland’s small-market feel and never wants its tech scene to look like the Bay Area’s.
“There’s more of a purity of the work that we’re doing and the stuff that motivates us than what can happen down there,” Sasser said.
He brings up a term used by Portland tech writer Rick Turoczy, who runs the Silicon Florist website, to describe local founders: “aggressive humility.”
“I do think a little bit of it is a Portland thing,” Sasser said. “There is a little bit of that DNA in there. We’re not here to necessarily show off.”
Panic will show its office to the public — via online reservations — so Portlanders can give “Big Walk” a try in a specially decked-out room with purple and pink lights, projectors and other surprises to round out the demo.
-- Zane Sparling contributed to this report.
Jonathan BachJonathan Bach covers housing and commercial real estate. He wants to know how rent and mortgage costs affect readers' wallets, and tell stories that go behind the scenes of Portland's office market. Jonathan...
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