The Caribou Trail

In The Caribou Trail we play Fish, a soldier from the Newfoundland Regiment, sent out to fight the Ottoman Empire in Gallipoli. What at first might sound like a shooter in a lesser known conflict is in fact a walking sim where we experience the story of three former fishermen from a village far from where they are now. To not spoil too much the game deals with loss and trauma as a result from participating in a war. The artstyle used is a midpoint between realism and low-poly; somewhat similar to their previous game Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina). There are some animations that could've used a bit more polishing but most are fine.

Since it's a walking sim most of your time will be occupied by walking around and interacting with stuff. That means holding the left or right mouse button sometimes even both at the same time. The other part of your time you will spend talking or listening to people. Most of it is fairly enjoyable but there are people that are supposed to annoy our MC and sadly they do it well. Generally speaking though: The voice actors do a very great job of breathing life into their characters, so listening to them tell ghost stories or memories from when they were small feels immersive.

As already mentioned, Fish and his buddies are being sent to invade a country far away from home. Although at first this might sound exciting it turns out most of the time they spend there is digging trenches, living in them and cooking. The game manages to convey the monotony of everyday life in the trenches by letting us repeat many of the tasks like cooking where we stir our soup for minutes to try to soak our hardtack rations until they finally break apart and become edible mush. This becomes tedious very fast especially because for most interactions you have to hold the buttons instead of just pressing them once. From an accessibilty standpoint alone this is really bad, but even for people who don't have any issues it might become annoying fast.

And even though the game makes you question whether you want to cook ever again it still feels far too short. This fairly underwhelming gameplay is paired with a story that is a bit hit or miss. For me the three hours it took me to finish the game were spent hoping the story would go deeper but that never happened. Only just before the game ends the devs finally turned it up a few notches. The ghost/horror elements that are hinted at in the beginning stay that way probably because the actual days we play are few. There are long timeskips in between some of them. I think since the game has great moments it only highlights how short the game really is because it feels like there are things missing. Also, once we play the ending we find out what the devs were capable of all along and start wondering why this wasn't already in earlier parts.

All in all, 'The Caribou Trail' could be worth your time if you are down for an Anti-war walking sim with supernatural/horror elements. There are missable achievements if you don't know about them but that's the only replay value you get. I'd suggest waiting for a sale or buy it if you're interested in World War 1 from a different perspective than typically observed in videogames or movies.

A copy of the PC version of the game for review purposes was provided by the development studio Unreliable Narrators and the publisher Indie Asylum