Caravan SandWitch review – sci-fi that benefits from the power of a real place

I spent a good part of this morning trying to remember the precise artwork that Sauge, the heroine of Caravan SandWitch, reminds me of. With her baggy, almost plus four style trousers and bouncing quiff, she’s relatively close to Tintin, but I had a twittering sense that there was something else at play too. Eventually, I remembered it: Emil and the Detectives, the children’s adventure by Erich Kästner. More specifically, those airy, bendy, thick-lined ink illustrations by Walter Trier. Retro and modern all at once, as art struck on the cusp of the 1930s often was. Cheerful and spirited, filled with a headlong sense of derring-do. It’s a perfect fit.

Caravan SandWitch reviewPublisher: Dear VillagersDeveloper: Studio Plane ToastPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 12th September on PC (Steam), Switch and PS5.

Caravan SandWitch is a lovely thing, an exploration adventure game without player death but brought into focus by a quiet sense of mourning. Sauge has returned to her home planet in search of her sister, who disappeared years ago, but has left a trail of messages behind her. The planet is a beautiful place, but it’s also ravaged, exploited, mined out and now abandoned. The game plays out as Sauge pieces together this mystery of her sister’s life while pelting about the environment in a chunky little van, bringing things back to life, meeting different communities and helping out, and generally being the goodest of eggs. I loved it.

The world is a big part of this. I’ve played a lot of games set in relatively sweet-natured post-apocalyptical planets – most recently something like Creatures of Ava comes to mind. But Ava’s world is inspired by the bioluminescent jungles of Avatar, whereas Caravan SandWitch leans more heavily on a real place, Provence, with its sandy stone, its crags and fields and artful towns. The difference is striking: it feels like this game has much more solid foundations, being based on a proper sense of understanding a place rather than just seeing it on a screen.

There’s variety to the world too. I love the cobbled-together central town, where rough concrete gives way to sun-warmed rock, and where shacks cling to the sides of a canyon wall, but where a bedroom might equally be a space located in some kind of giant outlet pipe. I loved the coast, with its pearly sea froth and spars of rock that might hold secrets. There’s desert and a sort of scrabbly forest too, all of it lying beneath a huge and terrifying wind vortex that sits on the horizon and radiates menace. It’s a compact place, but it has many moods, and it rewards exploring – with trinkets and in-game loot, sure, but also with viewing spots where you can just sit and rest on a blanket or cushion someone’s long since laid out for you, and areas where you can turn on an old radio and hear some weird tinny music for a spell. It’s a game that wants you to linger.