Better check out those desert dunes of Caravan SandWitch again, someone buried the lede. An open world you can explore on a few silent evenings? One that lends itself to the elated, free-form exploration of Elden Ring or Breath Of The Wild; where you’ll be clambering over sprawling industrial concrete ruins on a quest to gather stuff for curious frogs, rather than being harassed by tedious checklists?
Okay, let’s get that last point out of the way. SandWitch can’t facilitate but eventually turn the freedom of wandering around in your yellow van into a strict scavenger hunt. Still, for most of its featherlight running time, this game is a real panacea for the more bloated map-clearing gamer. Plus, even when you’re sent to collect components from hamster cheeks before you can progress, there’s little in this world that doesn’t feel purposeful. Sidequests and bits of lore are purposefully scattered throughout the world, and every building is a well-thought-out concrete box of puzzles. In brief, it’s a fun time.
You play as Sauge, a spacewoman who has returned to her planet of Cigalo after receiving an SOS from her missing sister. Cigalo is a elated place, albeit economically and ecologically devastated after being exploited by a sinister space corporation called The Consortium. It is inhabited by petite settlements of humans, a few huge talking frogs called Reinetos, and the occasional amiable robot. Everything is amiable, as it should be – even gravity itself. There is no danger, no death, no damage from throwing yourself off the tallest building you can find. Just helping out your desert buddies, upgrading your van with more gadgets to solve puzzles, or working to discover exactly where Sauge’s sister went.
While SandWitch is too good-natured to be a critique of anything, its world design certainly feels like a gentle, yes-and-… dialogue with what we might call archetypal, stubborn map-building. The towers are a case in point. There were hints, when Far Cry 3 introduced us all the way down that obscure path (and then up, and then up again), that its jagged yellow ledges would eventually evolve into something more playful. Reductively speaking, that’s still what you’re doing here: scaling structures to reveal more of the map. The difference is that each of these buildings really does feel like its own thing. A riff on the formula, sure, but delicious.
I have a really difficult time understanding why I like these puzzles so much. They are so effortless and yet so satisfying, it feels like magic. They don’t require any real lateral thinking or complicated tricks. All you really need to do is stay alert and be somewhat aware of the gadgets you’ve already unlocked in the van. Most of the early puzzles involve reaching out to a series of electronic jammers scattered around the map and disabling them. You might need to activate a series of switches to open up a path for the van to rip open a loose door with your grappling hook, giving you access to a ladder, for example. I really like them. I don’t always want my brain to be teased. Sometimes all you need to do is tickle it with a feather plucked from an extremely uncommon chicken “very pretty puzzle” (The rooster is a mystery).
Besides, why look a chicken in the mouth, eh? I’ve seen what’s in those beaks, and it’s not pretty. Not like the views here. It’s almost irresponsible: such an ecological olympus of discovery that’s nice to look at can make you give up on preventing global catastrophe. The world of SandWitch is a world of dead and unused things coming to life, and discarded things coming back to life. Matte concrete has brought to life patches of painterly erosion, somewhat reminiscent of Revacholia’s brighter impressionism. Solar panels arch their necks toward the sky with grace and hope. Your van’s scanner occasionally reveals huge tendrils of mycelium networks crawling happily underground, and the horizon is home to smoldering uh-ohs topped by swirling, menacing clouds.
Okay, checklists. As a concession to channeling free-roaming into the progression points that mark a fresh chapter, the game occasionally requires a pile of variously uncommon components to upgrade your van with a fresh gadget. The components aren’t difficult to come by. They’re all over the world, and they’re also distributed throughout side quests. Still, I imagine everyone will hit a wall at some point and be forced to actually collect. The numbers aren’t really that demanding, it’s just that the sudden demand to play at the game’s pace rather than your own is very noticeable.
There’s also a bit—maybe not tension, but inconsistency—between the game’s stated mission as a cozy game about harmonious communities in a setting that’s also “an environment hostile to all civilizations due to overexploitation.” Essentially, the game’s reluctance to make you feel even a little bad about anything means its environmental parable feels hollow. Your companions fret loudly about their food supplies over a table full of loaves of bread and fruit. The sinister Consortium is mentioned but never present—and in this way, the issues seem introduced but never explored beyond their hopeful implications. The problem with Pristine Vibes, I think, is that even the creases are fundamentally just an aesthetic choice.
Still, the game has an undeniable air of wonderful, gentle melancholy that you get drawn into rather than trying to erase. I don’t want to spoil it too a lot about frogs, but learning about their place as natives of the planet is the real highlight. The most significant thing I’d like to convey here (especially if you’re starting to get a little wary of the deliberate “coziness”) is that a lot of real thought and craft went into how to create an experience that’s a genuinely relaxing, enjoyable place to spend time, while also being fun and satisfying as an open-world mini-game. This is – a thousand words later – time well spent.
I took the past week off because I was completely burnt out. If it weren’t for the little space Caravan SandWitch gave me for a few evenings, I’m not sure I would have come back.
This review is based on a test version of the game provided by the publisher.
