Cozy Caravan – A sweet adventure. PREVIEW
Cosy Caravan is a cozy casual indie game where you explore, gather supplies, complete small quests and other simple actions to increase your Happiness level. Along the way, you improve your caravan and cooking abilities by interacting with locals. The game is currently in Early Access with plans to add more throughout the year, and we hope to make the game even more appealing.
The game starts with character creation, and thankfully there are plenty of options to choose from. Otters, foxes, goats, cats, bears… and the list will grow as the roadmap indicates that more character options will be added. We didn’t see a way to change your outfit or character once you’ve already started the game, but perhaps we missed that or it will be added later. And we hope this ability will be added, because we’d like to be able to change a character’s appearance at any time, especially with so many options.
Once out in the world, you begin to perform tasks such as harvesting crops, helping with small town animal troubles, and other activities. Some of these involve navigating the map between different small locations and finding objects like frogs, or dig sites. The world was full of small scenes and other characters. Watching this living world as we led our bee-drawn caravan made it feel like it had been created with love and attention to detail. The activities you can take part in vary as you pass through, and there is always something to do. Playing classics, delivering milk to customers at the milk bar, and more. We were thrilled with such a variety of tasks.
In addition to trading, you can raise your heart level by waving to every other creature located around the world every day. At first, this is probably the fastest way to earn heart credits, but after a while it can probably get boring.
Other small gameplay touches and elements were added, including the ability to take pictures using the floating camera mechanic, as well as a recipe book and crafting that included its own cooking mini-games. This contributed to a constant light engagement in even the most mundane activities.
The music and sound are quite good and perfect for a game of this type. The dialogs are well written and each element creates a feeling of softness and comfort. Quite interesting to read, listen to and play.
Overall, Cozy Caravan was an enjoyable game. It was fun to read, listen to, and play, and we plan on returning to it throughout the development process. The team seems to really enjoy creating content, and it feels like everything was created with care.
As for criticism, I think some recommendations and tips on the trading part could have been valuable. There’s also no quest log or way to keep track of what quests you complete.
In everything else, the game is excellent and with continued support and additions, could be one of the best games in the cozy genre. Even in its current state, there is a lot to see and do here. It’s a charming little game filled with heart and soul that is worth playing for any fan of cozy games.
