An Early Access code was used, with many thanks to Plan of Attack.
In Cozy Caravan, you journey through picturesque landscapes with Bubba, your best friend, in a caravan drawn by Rigby the Bee. Australian developer 5 Lives Studio have made a beautifully crafted world for us to travel in.

The Newest Guild Rookies
After customizing your animal character in Cozy Caravan, you find yourself in Fellowood Acres, where a letter from Aunty Madeline tells you they have an urgent Guild Request. Could you and your best friend Bubba help as the newest Guild Rookies? She’s equipped a caravan for you that you can use to travel around and asks to spread happiness all around the region of Harvestvale. A world that, according to representative Arthur, revolves around the Guild Hall in Basslebrook.

The caravan in Cozy Caravan has multiple functions. Together with Bubba you lead Rigby on the road from your carriage seat, in the back there’s sleeping space and storage space. You can get new upgrades by gathering enough happiness and getting tokens from Arthur. This, in turn, can lead to the upgrades that are shown below, like the cooking bench that popped up in the caravan after exchanging tokens.

At weekends, it’s market day for you: you ring the outside bell, and a little shop pops up. Now is the time to sell the produce you have acquired while helping out the characters you met on the road. This makes the shoppers happy and nets you more hearts. Later on, once you have been able to buy some upgrades, you can also sell dishes and items you have crafted.

Travelling the World in Cozy Caravan
The world in Cozy Caravan is big from the start, though I understand the developers are working on adding new regions. During your travels, you help out local farmers by harvesting some of their crops, and you are rewarded with produce. You also meet Luca, who wants to play hide and seek. Bogart has to do some Bee-walking, and the little bees just won’t stay on the leash. And you find several little frogs who have lost their way to their favourite pond. Of course, you help them out, though it’s not yet clear where the pond of their destination is. It’s such a fun sight, however, to see them ride along on the caravan.

All these things show clearly that Cozy Caravan is striving for a cosy and quirky feeling with a good dose of humour; a lot of the requests and talks brought a smile to my face. I did notice there is no task list; instead, the characters you talk to remind you of the things that you could pick up. I understand that the developers don’t want to turn the quests into a sort of shopping list you check off, interfering with the laid-back feeling. However, I noticed that I was searching for the most efficient ways to do the errands anyway. I guess you’ll have to experience how you would feel about that.
That’s the premise of Cozy Caravan, but does it work? I’m happy to tell you that it does, even in this early access stage. Sure, the game does need a bit of spit and polish here and there. Sometimes speech bubbles linger, the promised cooking table didn’t show until I quit and started the game again. Little things, but they didn’t interfere with my feeling of immersion in the game. I have played the entire game on my Steam Deck, which is great news. I did struggle with inputting my character’s name, turns out the combo Steam button pressed with X does the trick.

A Nice Dose of Bubba
Cozy Caravan is shaping up to be a great addition to the cosy genre of games. Even in this stage of very early access, it’s already a lovely and immersive game. What stands out to me is the humour in the game. Bubba is a special character who only says “Bubba Bubba” but somehow makes perfect sense for my little game character.

There are some bugs to be repaired, but nothing game-breaking. The developers are working behind the scenes to fix them, and to expand the game with even more regions and characters to meet.
You can find Cozy Caravan here in the Steam shop, and I wanted to end with this screenshot. Even the way the developers approach the need for further development has a good dose of humour!

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