| Quick Verdict: Camper Van: Make it Home is a cozy environment where you place down items to make your camper van more homey. It has the whisper of a story underneath, but the focus is on placement. The only thing I wish were more fluid is the initial camera angle setup in each level. |
| Game: | Camper Van: Make it Home |
| Developer(s): | Malapata Studio |
| Publisher: | Malapata Studio and Wings |
| Review Score: | 9 |
| Cozy Score: | 10 |
| Price: | $14.99 |
| Pros: | The art style is really charming and I love that you can choose several different campers over time. I thought it was a particularly nice detail that things you placed in a previous level for a specific camper would still be there in the next level. |
| Cons: | Getting the camera into a good angle can take some fiddling and isn’t the most intuitive. |
| Platforms: | PC |
| Genres: | Puzzle |
Camper Van: Make it Home joins the line-up of games like Unpacking. In it, you’ll have your pick across several different campers of not only how those campers look, but where everything inside of them goes. As you play, you’ll see a life unfolding in the background as you navigate, placing the objects of your life inside the small space.
While it’s not unfair to draw comparisons between Camper Van: Make it Home and Unpacking, there are several features that set Camper Van: Make it Home apart. You’ve got the same setup of not knowing what item will be coming next and finding a home for it, but you also get to explore outside to find meaningful items and customize the way your camper looks.
In this game, you’ll find several different categories to place things like bathroom items, food, clothes, and even outside decorations. As you progress, you’ll be introduced to new types of items to place. Making them all fit orderly in the tiny space is a bit of a challenge, but you’re not limited to where things go. If you want to throw something out on the lawn to live, you absolutely can!
Personally, I love setting up a little picnic-style area outside of all of my campers because it gives me a place to dump a few items and makes it feel a lot more cozy and lived in.
Thankfully, there are dozens of little spaces to put things. If there’s a cabinet or a drawer, then you can use it. Sometimes, there are even designated spots for some things, like a utensil drawer.
What I found hardest to navigate was the clothes. I have this need to place them all together and make things orderly, but the clothing space is one area where you’ll have to compromise. Many a hat has simply been tossed on the bed to live because I couldn’t find a designated “hat” space.
Watch the trailer for Camper Van: Make it Home!
Just be sure that you’re fine with something where you’ve placed it because while this game does switch out the van a few times, the same van will keep all the decorations you placed in previous levels. That means that when I put the hats on the bed in one level and am not prompted to pick a new camper in the next, those hats are still placed down where I left them.
They’re not stagnant; you can still move them, but it’s a detail to keep in mind that if you’ve shoved it away, it’ll still be there to shame you until you switch out campers.
I like the little bit of continuity and the bits of life that you glean without words even being said. In one level, you’re managing the belongings of two people and, in the next, your belongings are where you placed them, but the others are missing. It’s an interesting way to highlight the trappings of life.
In every level, you get to see new surroundings, which are gorgeously rendered, and find new little treasures. Each area has at least three items that you can interact with outside of your camper and will serve as mementos of your time. Each level is documented in a journal of sorts and these items help shape that experience.
It’s a very relaxing and cozy game made up of simply organizing the items of someone’s life and deciding what it looks like. The challenge comes from finding a home for everything in such a small space, but it tests you in minimal ways so as not to be frustrating. There are no wrong answers in this game.
Throw things out on the lawn if it pleases you, I certainly have.
The only real issue that I had with Camper Van: Make it Home is minimal and comes down to the camera angling. Getting the camera positioned in the way you want at the height and angle you want will take a fair bit of fiddling because you’re working in a smaller space. However, once you’ve got it, it’s pretty simple to navigate. It really is just that initial positioning at the start of a level that takes some effort.
Overall, I think Camper Van: Make it Home is a perfectly lovely game to while away some time with. And, you even get to choose a pet later down the road. I chose the lizard and it brought me so much joy to watch him meandering around outside the camper van. So cute.
If you want to subsume yourself in gorgeous art, simple organization, and a cozy environment, then you’ll want to head over to Steam and grab Camper Van: Make it Home for $14.99.
If this game isn’t your cup of tea, then you might be interested in some other reviews we’ve done recently. Bathhouse Creatures is a small management game that lets you manage several different bathhouses for animals and Bugtopia is an idling creature collector where you collect and breed bugs to fill out your insect-opedia.
