Caravan SandWitch is a smooth off-road jaunt that would be better experienced in a linear fashion

Caravan SandWitch prides itself on being a “narrative-driven exploration adventure,” but what happens when the world I long to explore gets in the way of the narrative and overall pacing?

Plane Toast’s game, which received rave reviews, promised no conflict, no fail states, just driving in a post-exploitation world, helping nomads and others left behind by the capitalist machine. It was an interesting sci-fi setting, but it didn’t seem to have any meaning or power due to the limited level of game design and a frustrating lack of focus.

It always sucks to put a lot of passion and effort into a well-intentioned indie game only to be disappointed in the end, but it’s a feeling that (at least for me) comes up more often than I’d like. For once, I understand what Caravan SandWitch is trying to do, but I don’t think it’s a complete journey.

The game’s premise is simple: Sauge arrives on the planet Cigalo after living in outer space for a while. Why did she leave? Why is she back there now? If this were a story-driven game with a strong hook from the start, these questions would have driven the game for hours, but they are answered within the first few minutes. Cigalo was once a thriving world thanks to colonization efforts, but now it’s half-eaten by deserts and storms, with the local alien frogmen trying to survive alongside nomads and workers who stayed because they could call Cigalo home at the time.

Now, Sauge and her friends (most of whom appear simultaneously in the first half hour or so) are trying to find out what happened to her missing sister by tracking a mysterious transmission. It’s a thin premise that other indie studios would have turned into a tighter, more thrilling ride, lasting five hours at most. In Caravan SandWitch, however, you’re tasked with driving a van around helping small communities while obsessively collecting electronic parts. In fact, those parts are the key to all of this, as the obstacle in each chapter is simply finding the amount of junk needed to piece together the van’s upgrades.

The structure of this game is weird, as the game’s exploration and puzzles are reduced to a quick look/wander through some ruins, and pressing buttons as soon as you see them. The game itself feels uncomfortable. Each chapter reminds us of the urgency of finding Sauge’s sister, but the core of the entire game is actually spending time interacting with the people and helping them with their chores. It reminded me of the worst part of Fallout 4, which was how the main story immediately collided with the actual video game (your son has been kidnapped, here are a thousand ways to distract yourself).

I keep seeing glowing praise for the game’s world and exploration, but the tools and movement options I get are all too basic. The game tries to complete a Metroidvania-like loop with gadgets in a van, but you have access to nearly the entire surface map (there’s a limited underground map) from the start, and are pleasantly surprised to find a particularly striking abandoned tech base. You can’t open the door yet, and that’s it.

By Chapter 4, things start to get real With dry, uninspired gameplay and bizarre twists (even fast travel is cumbersome), it’s clear that Plane Toast wanted to tell a melancholic, character-driven story and deliver their own take on the collectathon open world, but couldn’t crack how to blend those two visions into a harmonious world. Perhaps slightly deeper driving and platforming mechanics would have worked here, but the final version of Caravan SandWitch feels too scattered to make its narrative work, and too focused on accessibility to really let any of its gameplay elements shine. Likewise, the overall design of the world map is limited, resulting in a vast but ultimately small land that you’ll know all too well by the third hour, leading to a lot of backtracking frustration.

On the positive side, Caravan SandWitch is beautiful and artistically consistent. It controls well enough, too, though the van itself is prone to getting stuck when you stray a few meters off the beaten path, so much so that you’ll want to punch the screen when you’re forced to respawn in Nefle’s garage for the fourth time. I’d say it’s not a relaxing game. The music and sound design add to the French Provence-style locales, and they were the only thing keeping me sane when I was told to traverse the entire map again to complete a minor mission. Sure, it doesn’t last more than three or four minutes (unless I get distracted), but the promise of adventure quickly turns to mundaneity, three times worse than some people have said about Ubisoft’s open-world games.

Regardless, the positive response proves there’s untapped market potential for creating charming, colorful worlds that don’t bombard players with violence and upgrade systems. Cigalo isn’t portrayed as a depressing post-apocalyptic wasteland, which is a win in itself. I just wish there was more to Caravan SandWitch than enjoying the Mediterranean-like alien landscape and picking up items if you let me drive back and forth over the same dunes for eight hours while reading speech bubbles and chat logs. As I approach the end, I can only hope there’s some real sadness or happiness at the end of this dusty road.