'The Caribou Trail' can be beautiful and deep, but remarkably inconsistent.
Don’t say a bad word about so-called “walking simulators” — some of the finest moments in indie games have come from Dear Esther, What Remains of Edith Finch, Still Wakes the Deep, and, most recently, Mixtape. It’s just a shame that The Caribou Trail, which lands on PS5 this month, doesn’t quite make the list.
It has the chops on paper. This four-to-five-hour World War I experience, based on the infamous Gallipoli campaign, spent a couple of months as a PC exclusive (and gardnered a bunch of Very Positive feedback). I’m a sucker for the genre, and I also majored in WWI history at college, so this felt like a slam dunk.
Yet while The Caribou Trail is an interesting, unique, and occasionally memorable game, it trades the strengths of its key selling point for dull and repetitive mechanics, a hit-and-miss artistic direction, and uninspired wider worldbuilding.
Some moments feel significant, but usually play out without any real payoff.
