Imagine the trope: you come from a small town, living the big city life, when suddenly something comes calling for you at home. Caravan SandWitch puts a spin on it by changing the scale, swapping cities for planets.

The protagonist, Sauge, receives a distress signal from her older sister’s spaceship – the sister who had been presumed dead for the last six years. Dropping everything, Sauge returns to the family’s largely deserted home planet of Cigalo – where only people from her childhood still remain, begrudgingly.

You could argue that the second main character is the yellow van Sauge receives early on in the game, which is key to the exploration of the planet. There is a lot to see, and the van receives handy upgrades as you progress through the story.

The game takes inspiration from some of the classic exploration worlds, where most of the surfaces you see are reachable, climbable, jumpable, drivable or zip-line-able, providing depth to a seemingly simple and cosy world. There’s no danger or risk of any kind, either – both Sauge and her van can fall off cliffs of any height and just carry on. Always fun.

While roaming about, you’ll have side quests to complete and plenty of characters to meet – this is an open-world game, after all. On your travels you will find old components for your van that help you to access new spaces, and some characters will offer useful information or stop you for a nice nostalgic chat. Or you can choose to swerve all this and carry on with the main quest – but we know you’re not going to do that.

As you get deeper into this mysterious world, one thing will stand out above all else: the design. The characters, music and overall style and visuals have been carefully crafted to surround you with a nice to look at, yet sad and abandoned, planet. And the beautiful scenery is, by the way, inspired heavily by the French Provence, which is an homage to the real world: the team behind the game is also from France, headquartered in Paris.