2.5/5 ★ – AaronElWhite's review of Caravan Sandwitch.

Give me a cozy, charming, short exploration game and I'll almost always love it. Which is why I find myself so shocked that this particular game has been such an off-putting experience for me. The good stuff about it - art style, music, story hook about finding a long-lost and presumed dead loved one, and general idea of driving around with a van full of tools to interact with the environment, collect things, and complete quests - mean it should have worked for me. I'm sad that it didn't. Despite three sessions of almost three hours, I've just yet to find the fun or the motivation to continue. The van itself controls fine, but the world feels very barren and uninteresting. There is so little to interact with and the primary component collectible provides no real feeling of reward because of how many there are. Worst of all, it is maddening to have to drive a few feet, get out of the van, run over and pick up a collectible, run back to get into the van, resume driving, rinse and repeat. That's just not a fun gameplay loop. Likewise, the quests are so simple and characters so devoid of deep interaction that completing them doesn't give me a feeling of a satisfaction either. And that deeper story seems so much better suited to a strong narrative and not something as minimalistic as this. For me - the best games in this genre make me want to fly, walk, drive around endlessly just taking in the surroundings and vibes even if I'm not doing anything progressive. But transferring that formula into what amounts to an indie cozy game version of an Ubisoft open world formula where your goal is to go around and unlock towers just wasn't compelling enough and since I'm trying to make an effort to not waste my time when I stop enjoying a game, I'm unfortunately gonna have to abandon this with very little possibility that I'll ever come back.