Caravan Sandwitch

[Maryokutai]

Found out about this by chance when I went through the Golden Joystick nominees and after watching its trailer I immediately bought it. Looked like it'd hit all the right notes for me and thankfully that proved correct.

 

It's from a small French studio called Plane Toast (the food-puns seem to be all over the place) and seemingly their first project. You play as a young adult girl who receives an SOS signal from the ship her sister disappeared in six years prior, proceed to leave the space station you're currently residing at and start following the trail of the signal to a mostly deserted colony planet where you grew up. It's not the most unique setup, but it gives you an immediate emotional hook for what is essentially a purely exploration-driven open world game. And it mixes in some slight Dune-ish mystery elements via the titular Sand Witches and some subtext about environmentalism and corporate greed in there as well.

 

The gameplay foundations are very light, there's a bit of climbing and platforming, there's a lot of driving around, and the only thing you find when exploring are either materials to build new tools or certain items you need to collect quests. Because there are still some people living on the planet and they're struggling to survive, so they're more than happy to have a newcomer there who can help out. Story progression is linked to the tools you build, as unlocking one moves the plot and timetable a bit forward. There's no combat, so when I say tools I mean a gadget to allow you to use ziplines or a scanner for your car to more easily find interactable objects, among them signal blockers which jam your map and are basically UbiSoft towers (they only reveal a couple of question marks on the map though, not a hundred).

 

I can't put my hand on what it is exactly, probably just all the gears perfectly fitting together, but it's an incredibly engaging experience IMO. It's not a deep game by any means, at least mechanically. Think of it as a less obtuse version of Sable, or the bigger cousin of A Short Hike, and you get the idea. The world is densely packed and gives the impression of being vast, but you can drive around from one edge to the other in I presume less than five minutes. But it does evoke an incredibly sense of place, mostly due to the strong artstyle, great soundtrack and grounded, believable writing. It's also unmistakably French, and I don't say that with any kind of fun-poking subtext, because the media landscape has become very unified in recent years, so it's nice to see something European with a unique cultural influence for a chance.

 

I guess part of why I like it so much might also be because it just came out of nowhere, which nobody reading this and deciding to pick it up will have the luxury anymore, but I do believe it's a really good 'experience' if you like more challenge-free games. I'm not quite through yet, but I suspect it will conclude at around the 10 hour mark, which seems like a reasonable length for a game without much mechanical depth. 

 

One last thing: I play it on Switch because I don't have a PS5 or a decent PC and I wouldn't really recommend that version. It permanently runs sub-30fps and has horrible pop-in and dynamic resolution drops. It speaks to the quality of the game that I'm still enjoying it, but unless you have no other option like myself, I'd strongly recommend playing it anywhere else.

 

 

[Craymen Edge]

I bought the game a week ago, and have been picking away at it since.

 

I agree with all your points about regarding how it plays and feels. It's a pleasure to put on for an hour or two and just go exploring or complete a couple of side objectives.

 

[Maryokutai]

Just competed it, ended up being around 12 hours for me, but I never used fast travel. Can't add much to what I've said before as the basic premise and gameplay loop, if you want to call it that, never changes or evolves, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and thankfully it didn't drop the ball with the ending either and provided a beautiful conclusion.

 

This isn't a game for everyone, and even those who'd like it probably won't like it as much as I do, but this has been an absolute delight and I put it straight in the upper area of my goty list.

[Sly Reflex]

So to provide context so it's not be just me saying "This is shite, don't bother".

 

First let's get the good things talked about. It looks fantastic. It's very French. The music and all that business is stylish. And that's about it.

 

The concept of the story is you are trying to find your sister. There's some other stuff going on, mainly it boils down to corporations are bad.

 

The main kicker for me is it feels like all the worst parts of something like Assassin's Creed. Go here. Do that. Collect all this rubbish. Got it? Bring it here. OK. Repeat.

 

There's a lot of mechanics in this game that just don't need to exist at all. The game hangs off these bits of loot that come in rarity colours and you can pick them up as you go. Green, yellow, red and purple. If you do the side stuff, you get some. If you look around the levels you get some. Your progress is walled off behind this. So should you not have the materials required, you need to go back out and get them. And let me tell you. It. Is. Really. Really. Boring.

 

On top of this game game works on a day system, and anything that is tied to specific days gets washed away. Don't deliver the gardening system granny wants? Well when you go back she's sorted it, so now you have to carry the thing that would have given you some scrap around for the rest of the game. Scrap that would have saved you from looking in every nook and cranny of the game, extending it even longer.

 

The missions themselves are boring. Nothing really happens. For instance there was one where I was sent for something and the woman that gave me the job came with me, and we went to two different place before the final place and all she wanted to do was sit and look at the view. It's really threadbare. It's all like this. It's a walking sim with some light puzzling and a lot of padding.

 

I feel like this could have been the perfect 4 or 5 hour game. Bin all the collecting off, go in you van to the objectives, do the thing, get to the day turning over, give you the thing you need to do the next day and repeat. But no, they insisted in putting this stupid collecting shit in that stalls the game out so you can get the days to flick over. It doesn't respect the players time at all. You can get to a point where there's nothing to do, but you are soft locked because scavenging because the game's like "Should have handed all those side quests in you did". It feels like I am being punished for driving the narrative forward when I shouldn't have been.

 

If it moved on at a fair old lick I think I could have forgiven it, when I look at all the other "walking sims" I have played they've all progressed with a minimal of back tracking, never locked me out of progressing and sure, I have maybe missed out on some side stuff, but the core of the story is there. The other thing is stuff like Gone Home, Dear Esther, The Unfinished Swan, Proteus and Journey are actually interesting narrative wise, I am interested to see where the next room goes, or what the next twist or puzzle is. With this I get the feeling that I have played this game for 100 hours, it becomes a digital purgatory where I am forced to fritter time away looking for junk in the vain hope that the next thing will bring even an iota of joy. It just never comes. It is gutting because at a glance it looks like exactly my type of game. In n out, enjoy the colours and story and move on. When you get in there and experience it, it's just so vapid. The gameplay is as empty as the deserts in the game. It doesn't say anything new or daring. 

 

I just want to reiterate that this game is really dull. This is my main take away from my time with it. The only good thing about it is it would make an excellent sleep aid. It's so wearisome in its tenure it is that the feeling it instills is of that when you are talking to a really old person and they are boring the absolute tits off you.

 

Avoid.

[Maryokutai]

To me this reminds me of how people said AC Odyssey was a grind, and I think for games like this you can have the wrong approach when going into them. Of course there's the argument that there shouldn't be a wrong way to play a game if it's neatly designed but if it's something that's more about the experience of being there and not necessarily about the elements that hold it together then I think the more curated design, that can put some people off, is legitimate. For me this is comparable to something like Lake or, at least how I imagine it, Death Stranding, where the travel periods through its emptiness should be savoured and actively pursued by the player, which in turn will result in you coming across structures and places of interest and will have more than enough material by the point you're ready to move on. Which also links into the whole narrative about the dichotomy of finding your own home again, realising it's on the collapse of destruction, therefore wanting to spend as much time there as possible but also being on a quite urgent search for your sibling.

[Sly Reflex]

But you see, I am locked now. I cannot progress without going through every corner of the map because I didn't hand things in the time frame it didn't tell me about. That's not good game design. It's not fun game design. I don't get to talk to the people and do the puzzles, I get to drive around in the truck pinging the sonar looking for scrap because they were too stupid to put measures in to make it so that there were fail safes in there. I can see lots of things I could in theory pick up, but I don't have the tool to use the ropes. Maybe I am completely softlocked? I am unsure and I don't think I shall be going back to resolve it.

 

And this is why I am critical of it. Because there was literally no need for this, they had the day system in there, they had logical parts to put the tools in I would need to do the next lot of days things, but they decided that they needed the hub and the junk to spend at it. It wouldn't be bad if it was just a throw away amount, but the prices of the items are feeling super high. I was surprised because I did everything I could outside of turning over every rock and I am still way short. You could put the worlds best story in this game, but if it's locked behind poorly designed and ill thought out mechanics, then it's for naught. There's a tried and tested thing where the thing you get at the end of the dungeon or whatever helps you with the next dungeon, it's so unanimous with games because it works. 

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, I can't put myself into that situation because it's the polar opposite of my experience with the game, which was cozy smooth sailing. I don't quite understand it because isn't unlocking tools what triggers the next day? Maybe you stumbled through a progress-quickening glitch early on and got screwed over at that point, but only noticed it hours later. Not that that makes it better and I can see why it soured your experience with it. If you're on PC I guess you could still somehow download a save state, but even then I get the feeling you'd not enjoy the rest anymore anyway.

[Sly Reflex]

Nah. The lady in the yellow jumpsuit gives you a schematic and that must be built to progress. She then goes "Hey, maybe you can check the aqueduct and kill those signals" or whatever and this is what you do. All the time you are dealing with the task are collecting all different rarities of scrap, at certain points you turn the scrap into the node at the front of the garage and she adds the scanner, hacker, winch etc. You do get scrap for doing side quests, but it's not enough on it's own, you still have to scavenge.

Like I said, if the thing was "Go to the landmark, solve the puzzle, get the story exposition and then we give you a new toy to tackle tomorrow" it would flow so much better. Otherwise you are stuck in a grinding pattern where you get to do none of the above.

 

It's like you have two lines of progress, the tasks they set you out to do which are mandatory, and the scrap hunting, which is also extra mandatory if you so much as happen to go across days where they will no longer accept missions you have done.

 

It's like they had nobody sit and play test it. Like what happens if you just do the mainline story. Or you skip all the text. Are there mechanics in place that allow you to look back or resolve issues you might face should you do that. It's not open to different play styles. Generally when I play a game, I will do the mainline story until I get to something that sounds like it's a bit much and go do some side stuff, unless the side stuff I come across has a reward or some other factor I am interested in. Or maybe I just need the XP to get stronger. Whatever really, people play games differently and I don't know if they took that into account. 

 

Actually there was one part where it told me to go get the tadpoles, and that I should feed them mushrooms. I was in a cave of mushrooms, so I walked around and around looking for the mushrooms in a cave full of mushrooms not being able to pick any up. Eventually I stumbled across a big pile of mushrooms, of which I could pick up, but I could only pick up one. I couldn't find anymore of these mushrooms, there weren't any marked on the map. So only one tadpole was delivered.

The way the games quests works as well, presumably they all just fine their way home so you can do half of it, skip over the days and then lose your reward. I think the only one that carried on over days was the old guy that was looking for mallows, sandwiches and something else. But even then I think that his requests are limited to the days from what I can gather. I don't think I saw a single item other than the mallow I could reach. I could see sandwiches, just not collect them at that time.

 

Wanted to like it, saw it was in the humble monthly which I sub to and was right on it. Saw it had middling reviews and just assumed that it was because people rally against stuff that has woke in because they are idiots. Then when I get into it I see why it might have that rating.

 

Not to say you can't and shouldn't enjoy it. It's just that it left me feeling a bit deflated after the few sessions I invested into it. 

[Maryokutai]

It's not like I don't believe you, it's just that, by accident maybe, I must have played this exactly how they intended it to be played. That's why I suggested earlier that there could be a risk of it falling apart when you break from that specific road of progress (which you seem to prove), but it's hard to say when all we have is two very different experiences with it. I do think it's not unreasonable to assume that a debut game from a small indie studio might not have significant QA testing – I haven't really read into other people's opinions and feedback about for the reason you mentioned, as I thought it would just be the usual black & white nonsense with nothing of substance in between. So I actually don't know if it's somewhat common for people to run into your roadblocks or not.

 

Anyway, it's a shame it 'broke' for you. Like I said it was one of my favourite games from last year so I'm glad it didn't on my end.

[Sly Reflex]

So basically I followed the path they said, and grabbed the side stuff. I forget specifically what they were, but once you move across days a lot of the text threads go into the archived bits and that fucks you. I know for sure I got one with the gran. I did hand in the one where you dress the mannequin, but there were others that archived.

 

There were also some others that never truly updated as I expected them to. So there was a little frog that wanted me to collect something, I did it, we moved onto another area and I retrieved what he wanted there, and then that was it. He just locked up. I presumed he was going to move to the next place and we were going to continue on with that and then I would be rewarded, but nope. In fact thinking about it I don't think I ever delivered the mallow, I think I went across days there. I am unsure. It's been a few days now and my memory is starting to get hazy on the definite specifics.

 

And it's fine. I didn't care for it for the reasons stated. If you do intend to play this, make sure you hand in everything as soon as you are done with it, lest you get locked like I did.