A fun trading adventure with a charming story, but held back by repetition and frustrating RNG.
I genuinely enjoyed my time with Caravan. The story is engaging: you begin as the heir to a kingdom, only to lose everything and be forced to rebuild your fortune through trade across an Oriental-inspired fantasy world. It's a refreshing premise that kept me interested throughout the game.
The gameplay mixes trading, haggling, and dice-based combat that feels reminiscent of tabletop games. Trading between towns, cities, and capitals is satisfying, as different goods sell for different prices depending on the region. Haggling can further increase your profits, making commerce the heart of the experience.
There are several character classes, such as Traders, Merchants, Rogues, Mercenaries, Sages, and Scouts. Traders and Merchants excel at haggling, while Rogues and Mercenaries specialize in combat. However, I never felt there was enough distinction between Rogue and Mercenary, or Trader and Merchant, to justify them being separate classes. Sages act as healers for your hired companions, while Scouts help with exploration.
Your caravan itself is another enjoyable mechanic. You can use mules, horses, and camels, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Mules are your basic pack animals but require water. Horses also need water, carry plenty of cargo, and significantly increase travel speed. Camels carry even more and don't require water, making them incredibly valuable. Unfortunately, movement speed seems to cap around 11.64, making further investment into speed feel less rewarding outside of temporary abilities.
Speaking of abilities, both your Caravan Master and companions have active skills with cooldowns. While some of them are useful, I found the system required too much micromanagement and constant planning. Passive skills would have made managing the caravan feel much smoother.
Leveling also felt awkward. Experience is earned easily, but it cannot be spent until you visit a Guild and pay money to train your companions. This makes gold even more essential than it already is, which isn't necessarily a bad idea, but I wasn't a fan of how progression was tied to it.
One disappointment is that you're locked into playing a male protagonist. Thankfully, you can recruit both male and female companions, which offers some variety.
My biggest frustration, however, was the companion RNG.
After completing three full playthroughs, I still never found a Trader companion. I searched online, asked around, and found absolutely no information about the recruitment chances or whether certain companions are tied to hidden conditions. This became especially frustrating because my final remaining achievement requires having a female Trader, Mercenary, Rogue, Sage, and Scout, along with five spices. I managed to recruit every other required companion—but never the Trader. Having my final achievement depend entirely on what feels like undocumented RNG left a very sour taste.
The random events are enjoyable at first. You might discover wells where an auxiliary can gather water (or accidentally fall to their death), help strangers, get ambushed, loot tombs, temples, or caves, or make unexpected purchases. Unfortunately, the variety is fairly limited, and after a while you'll start seeing the same encounters repeatedly. I'd have loved more event diversity, more meaningful choices, and more opportunities for Scouts to influence outcomes instead of relying mostly on RNG.
Another minor annoyance is how discoverable events work. You either encounter them randomly or spot them within your caravan's vision range. Once you do, you have to click them almost immediately before they disappear, which feels unnecessarily stressful.
Presentation-wise, the game has beautiful artwork that captures its setting well. The music is pleasant, though not particularly memorable. There isn't much voice acting, but the ambient sounds, animal noises, combat effects, and travel audio fit the atmosphere nicely. Managing water while traveling also adds an extra layer of planning without becoming overly punishing.
Despite its flaws, I had a good time with Caravan. It reminded me a lot of Tradewinds Caravan, which brought back a lot of nostalgia. While the game could have benefited from more event variety, better class balance or even less classes, less micromanagement, and a less RNG-dependent achievement system, it's still an enjoyable trading simulation game that's absolutely worth its asking price.
Overall: 7/10.
