Everything in Caravan SandWitch is on the verge of success. It’s not just because the pun inherent in the game’s name isn’t cheesy, it’s because the combination of exploration, storytelling, and Metroidvania-style gameplay loop creates that sense of discovery that’s so crucial to entertainment value, and it also manages to tell a classic story, but one that works well.
Is “almost” a quality in itself? Well, that’s the big question, but it’s easy to see how ambitious the Plane Toast studio is and how important it is to focus on the breadth of the experience. This allows them to even get a recommendation from one server, but unfortunately it rarely comes down to a recurring theme.
You are Sauge, returning to your home planet Cigalo, which has fallen on hard times after pulling out of a global corporate consortium. Research has left parts of the planet uninhabitable, while lack of investment has led to the remaining inhabitants being relocated. Sauge believed her sister had died under mysterious circumstances a few years ago, but suddenly her spaceship sends out a signal from the surface of Cigalo and Sauge, having moved to a large space city, is forced to confront her sister’s past and find out if his sister is even still alive.
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This is how Caravan SandWitch begins, and it’s undoubtedly an excellent setup. Sauge’s gradual rebuilding of his small community is fluidly and relatively gracefully narrated, though the game cries out for voice acting. Cigalo has a Provençal flair that makes both the town he comes from and the world he must explore on foot and by car (more on that later) absolutely well constructed, chock-full of unique iconography and bubbling with identity. It’s classic post-apocalypse, but with a crucial hopeful twist. Yes, all the money is gone, but what remains are the locals, and they have a positive outlook on life.
The game’s narrative is the first “almost,” because while everything remains hopeful and interesting, it lacks more crucial parts, milestone events that advance Sauge’s understanding of the world around her and of herself. Plane Toast tries several times, but the game is a bit too rigid in its structure for anything more substantial to happen. Instead, everything is subtle in the end, making the game particularly suitable for relaxing, for a different plot structure, and it works, but it’s a shame that the game never really gets going, taking significant risks for Sauge and his friends and family.
The structure is another “Fast”. Caravan SandWitch features an open world filled with abandoned ruins, old manufacturing facilities and run-down factories. It’s up to you to collect computer parts and components to upgrade your car while gradually expanding your character gallery and uncovering important secrets. This all sounds great and exploring the world to collect components is tangible, practical and realistic enough to be downright brilliant. Entering the enchanting nothingness of Cigalo, spotting a disused factory on the horizon and emerging with plenty more resources is a great feeling and it’s no loss that there are no enemies or combat systems. The problem is the Metroidvania structure, because once you get to that factory, 90% of the time you’ll run into a series of obstacles that will force you to come back later, but the game’s reward loop or map isn’t strong enough to create memorable milestones that make you want to come back once you’ve acquired more skills. The idea is good, Metroidvania games can at best give that exact structure to unstructured gaming experiences. But if you’re primarily looking for components rather than mechanics that make you easily plan and remember where a new skill will soon open up, it fails. Going back to the starting point; it almost works.
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Purely physics and platforming wise, however, Caravan SandWitch is on point, and it’s fundamentally great to control Sauge in third person, jumping and climbing and interacting with this extremely physical and tactile open world. Likewise, controlling your car is functional and clever, and even with mechanics like a grappling hook, it never gets twisty or bumpy. The car lacks a little customization, perhaps in the style of Pacific Drive, which creates a stronger connection between Sauge and that mode of transport, but the systems that are there under the hood, the fundamentals, everything works as designed.
And it’s hard to find fault with the looks, either. Caravan SandWitch is downright pretty to look at most of the time, with a beautiful cel-shaded tone that gives every vista, every character, well… character. It’s actually pretty to look at, but the game also faces the problem that comes with a desert-inspired post-apocalypse: there’s a lot of sand and dust, and while Plane Toast does a good job of dividing the world into relatively recognizable parts, it all becomes a little too similar. Nice, but anonymous. Almost there again.
Again, it sounds like Caravan SandWitch fails in a few key areas, but that’s actually only half the story. This is a damn fine effort from a relatively untested studio, and while the studio fails to execute on many of its ambitions, it’s easy to like and pretty easy to recommend too. They’ve paved the way for something much better in the future with their off-road effort, that’s for sure.