Pako Caravan

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Pako Caravan is an Arcade-style game released on Apple Arcade in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch a few months later in 2021. This is a game where players guide a car with a growing number of trailers through levels to accomplish various goals, similar to the classic game Snake.

This game has a simple but appealing presentation, featuring simple, colorful 3D objects in a somewhat cartoony style. These visuals are backed by a plucky soundtrack that’s not especially noteworthy, but not overly annoying either.

The gameplay in Pako Caravan does one thing that’s a bit clever in that players aren’t only trying to grow the size of their snak-er… caravan… they’re also trying to accomplish various goals in the level, like trying to run over all of the traffic cones, trying to collect all of a certain object, or find a hidden object in the level. These various goals add a good amount of variety to keep things interesting throughout the game.

Having said that, I do have to point out this game’s one big flaw – its vehicles are somewhat unwieldy to drive, taking so long to turn that you need to start your turns well ahead of where you actually turn. While I understand it wouldn’t be thematically appropriate to have your vehicle making turns instantaneously, I would hope for a happier medium here where it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly fighting the controls every time you want to take a turn.

Because of this, Pako Caravan balances out to be a decent but flawed example of this style of game. It has some good and bad elements, but in the end it’s an okay version of Snake. If that appeals to you, you may want to give Pako Caravan a look.

tl;dr – Pako Caravan is an Arcade-style game in the style of the classic game Snake, but with cars. It infuses the genre with some variety by adding in different level goals to accomplish, but the basic controls for turning your vehicle are sluggish and unwieldy, resulting in a game that’s decent but not great.

Grade: C

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