I started school this week and I thought that I would be able to play a demo and a full game and be able to take two graduate classes and I am starting to see how that may not work. I will try to do it for as long as I can but I may take an extra week off to be able to do school work. Other than that disclaimer, This week is a cozy indie driving game about trying to find your sister while doing tasks for a bunch of people. This week is Caravan Sandwitch

Caravan Sandwitch is a cozy adventure game from Plane Toast published under Dear Villagers. The game was released on September 12th for PC, Switch, and PlayStation consoles. The game retails for $25. For the review, I received a key from the developer.

In Caravan Sandwitch you play as Sauge, a young woman who has recently received a distress signal from her sister who has been missing for going on six years on the planet of Cigalo. Living on the appropriately named Space City, you travel planet side and begin the hunt for where the distress signal’s origin and for that matter your sister. It seems as though someone has been reactivating jammer devices all over the world and they are standing in your way of finding your sister.

Caravan Sandwitch feeds the player the story in six chapters that highlight the main arc of how the Big Baddie corporation got there, the large storm in the distance, the missing sister, and why the big baddie left and never came back. Information is drip-fed to the player through the interactions with Cigalo’s inhabitants, whether it just be talking to them or doing tasks in your van for them. The overall story is your run-of-the-mill sci-fi story with more emphasis on individual characters’ experiences with the big corporation and why they decided to stay planetside. There are multiple provinces with multiple people with their own problems, whether that extends to food shortages, missing parts to complete a broken transportation vehicle or transferring consciousnesses, the world of Caravan Sandwich feels like it is inhabited by real people.

The game is more about the people and the people are relatable. The inhabitants of Cigalo are relatable, they feel like real people with the ways they act, their reasons for doing things, and even when they plead for Sauge’s help. The story is nice, cozy, and exciting at times.

Caravan Sandwitch revolves around the van that you acquire at the beginning of the game. This van does literally everything and everyone needs the van. Van controls are easy, a trigger to accelerate, a stick to turn, and a button for the turbo. After mastering the art of driving, Caravan Sandwitch then introduces puzzles for the player to solve, both in the van and outside it.

The puzzles bridge the gap between cozy and thought-provoking. Connecting electrical lines, pulling down doors, and pressing a few buttons is all it takes to get to your destination but the path there is never clear. This gameplay model encapsulates the “figure it out any way you want” method. If you want to hang out, collect components, and have the puzzles sit in the background until it randomly gets finished, then you can do that and if you want to take a few minutes and have a plan of attack just do the puzzle, you can do that too.

Platforming accompanies the puzzles 100% of the time. You are climbing on everything that looks like a ruin of an older civilization, looking for components to upgrade the van or an answer to a puzzle. There are many times when you have to be able to judge multiple gaps and climb a few ladders to make a jump to get to a bridge control console. Suage’s climbing and jumping animations are really responsive and exact. If there ever is an issue with the platforming it will usually be the player’s fault.

If you are not pushing the story forward then you are interacting with the settlers of Cigalo and doing cute little fetch quests for them. I was able to get the achievement of talking to all possible people within three hours of the game. The requests very rarely deviate from “take me to this place” to do a few things. There are two quests that I can think of that require more than running around a small area collecting a few things and then driving back home. Once you are done you are rewarded with components to help with the upgrading of the van, which I think is better than just looking for the components yourself out in the wild.

Caravan Sandwitch is a gorgeous-looking video game. The cel-shaded art style is just the best art design, it really makes Caravan Sandwitch pop. Coupled with that sweet post-apocalyptic theme, where you are driving around and see a crumbling ruin in the distance covered in lush greenery. The game is outright beautiful all of the time. The game has in-game cutscenes that just add to the charm and the dialogue is in boxes with cute hand-drawn profile pictures.

Caravan Sandwitch was just a beautiful game for the whole five hours until I rolled the credits.

The sound design is as good as it can be. Sauge makes a “hmph” every time she climbs an obstacle and the van has some real weight to its sounds, especially when you really step on the gas. I think that the soundtrack is what is at the forefront. The soundtrack by antynomy is really quite nice when it wants to be and when it needs to ramp up then it surely does. I really enjoy the vocals, whenever they come in I get chills.

Caravan Sandwitch is a great cozy game. It offers players the ability to further the story at their own pace while allowing them to tackle it however they see fit. The core gameplay is slow, fun, and thought-provoking at times. The puzzles are fun, the driving is heavy and fast, the exploring is super fun and the platforming is just right. The overall story is heartwarming and, at times quite serious in tone.

Caravan Sandwitch is one of the top cozy game that I played this year, for sure.

8/10