Travel the planet of Cigalo, a world once blanketed with lush forests and home to intricate mycelium networks. The Cigalo we knew is now a desert planet ravaged by industrial exploitation with only small patches of greenery remaining. A radioactive storm looms in the distance and abandoned concrete buildings pepper the almost lifeless landscape. Yet despite the sad state of Cigalo a few resilient individuals remain. Each one is determined to make the most of what is left behind. 

This is the stage set by Studio Plane Toast for their debut game Caravan SandWitch. Early trailers highlighted the sandbox-like exploration and casual platform mechanics, and we couldn’t wait for the official release on September 12^th.  Thanks to our friends at Dear Villagers, we were able to get our hands on the game early so we could get this review to you. 

Return to the Provence-Like Settlement of Estello

You play as Sauge, a spaceship pilot in training that receives a mysterious distress signal from our sister’s ship. One problem: sister has been missing for 6 years. Now Sauge will return to Cigalo in search of her sister, but they can’t do it alone. Enter Estello, a little community nestled in between two cliff faces, and the place where Sauge grew up. 

Life moved on in Estello the last 6 years, and there is a lot for Sauge to catch up on with the remaining residents. Don’t worry though, because the NPCs love to tell you what they’ve been up to the past few years. Even when accepting quests, they want to ride along and tell you about what they’ve been up to. These little tidbits really add to the feeling of community, with quests feeling more collaborative than the traditional fetch quest. 

Cozy-Casual Mechanics

Caring about the other residents of Cigalo is a good thing, because the mechanics of Caravan SandWitch can best be described as casual. It’s an adventure game with platformer puzzles and some collectathon elements thrown in. The world is a giant sandbox, with progress being gated by the upgrades on your caravan.  

This combination just works, and you can easily work on multiple side quests at once as you explore. From stray plushies left behind by families fleeing the planet, to fetching archival records from dilapidated industrial buildings, there are a ton of things to stumble upon.  

A common excursion can consist of leaving town in your caravan and navigating to a building you spotted at the top of the white rocky hills. There, you spy a little stuffed dinosaur that you grab for Apricot, the baby in town, before scavenging upgrade components from the machines left behind by the Consortium. Continuing you take a moment to stop at a viewing site and look out over the Cigalo desert as the TARSAAK storm looms on the not-so-distant horizon.  

A Sandbox Exploration Game with an Emphasis on Story – No Spoilers!

Caravan SandWitch has an emotionally touching story with plenty of twists and turns along the way. Completing side quests gives you a look at what life was like when the Consortium was still there, exploiting the planet for corporate gain. There are multiple ways to play, with two possible endings that I know of from the 10 hours I spent during my initial playthrough. 

I can say that in the beginning, I was a little put off by how much Sauge knew that I didn’t. NPCs talk as if you know what happened 6 years ago, when you have no clue. But as people travel with you and share stories of the past, there is an inherent feeling of solace in the community that remains on Cigalo. 

You can’t take people with you all the time, yet the strange sensation that you’re being watched never leaves. The SandWitch is always just around the corner, leaving warnings behind for anyone meddling in their affairs. What is their goal, and what do they have to do with your sister’s disappearance? I guess you’ll just have to play the game to find out. 

Caravan Fever

You spend a good portion of the game driving; I mean it has caravan in the name for a reason. So, let’s talk about that for a minute. This is the most approachable driving experience I’ve had in a game, after some tweaking with the game settings. I lowered my camera sensitivity down to 70. If you don’t do this the camera moves super-fast. I suspect this is because the camera movement matches the fastest speed of the caravan, but it makes the rest of the gameplay experience feel like it’s dragging behind the camera. 

Once you’ve nailed down camera speed and decided on which method you want to use for steering the driving is mostly a breeze. Just don’t reverse. It felt like every time I reversed, the caravan sped up exponentially. I would have to come to a full stop for the caravan go back to the normal speed. It wasn’t as much of an issue as time went on. Although, I’m not sure if that is because I was getting better at steering, or if the mechanic was improved by updates. 

Despite these quirks, the driving mechanic is very newbie friendly, and it didn’t cause a negative effect on my playthrough. 

Concerns

I did have a few concerns when playing. Before I get into them, I want to mention that Studio Plane Toast has been rolling out quick fixes and optimization updates while I was playing. I did see improvement in many of these issues as I played, but they haven’t been fully addressed just yet. Still, given the gradual increase in quality over the time I played, many of these may be completely addressed by launch. 

Let’s start with some stats. I played Caravan SandWitch on PC, and although there is controller support, I played with a mouse and keyboard. My PC is a little older, with a Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card. While I could run the game at medium graphics, I ultimately opted for low to squeeze out a few extra frames. Even then I still experienced a good bit of lag every time I closed the main menu, or Toaster as it’s called in game. 

I Think I Need a New Toaster

Speaking of the Toaster, about halfway through my playthrough it stopped clearing notifications from the top corner of the screen. It constantly said I had something to check, but I was never able to clear it. It wasn’t distracting, but it was definitely not intended.  

Also, if you ever finish a quest and the NPC refuses to let you turn it in, open your Toaster. When you finish a quest, you have to go through a little text exchange before you can turn it in. This added to the world building but created confusion when I went to turn in a quest or two and the NPC didn’t seem to have a clue why I was there. 

Closing Thoughts

I’m giving Caravan SandWitch a 4 out of 5 stars for being a wonderful story to just vibe to as you explore this picturesque post-apocalyptic world. 

Caravan SandWitch is a delightfully cozy exploration game with strong themes of community and the dangers of corporate space colonization. The combination of adventure, platformer, puzzle, and driving mechanics are approachable, and offer a gameplay experience that is naturally as enjoyable as it is emotional.  While there are a few cons, I could tell that the developers were actively improving on them as they approached release. A trend I’m sure will continue after full release.

Caravan SandWitch is out now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC through Steam and the Epic Game store. It retails for $25.99. NeverMore Niche was granted a review key by Dear Villagers.