There isn’t a shortage of war games out there; what is rare is one that knows exactly what story it wants to tell and commits to it completely. Developed by Unreliable Narrators, The Caribou Trail is short, sharp, and hits you right in the gut.
Young Men, Far From Home
The game follows three soldiers — Fisher, Gordon, and Lonnie — of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the only North American unit to fight in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. These were young b’ys from a small island in the North Atlantic, sent to the other side of the world to fight in someone else’s war.
Unreliable Narrators, themselves a Canadian studio based in Quebec, clearly feel that connection. The voice acting reflects it, with each character carrying a distinct Newfoundland accent, which does more for the authenticity of the story than any amount of period-accurate set dressing could.
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Meals and Stories
The emotional core of The Caribou Trail isn’t the fighting, it’s the spaces between it. Each night, the three soldiers sit down, eat, and talk. It’s a simple routine, and deliberately so. The game understands that relationships aren’t built in grand moments; they’re built in repetition, in the ordinary things you don’t notice until they’re gone. By the time the weight of the story lands, the groundwork has been quietly laid through those campfire conversations.
Loss in The Caribou Trail feels grounded and genuinely sorrowful. The deaths you witness don’t feel dramatic or cinematic. They feel like a waste. Young men, sent far from home, and for what? The game doesn’t answer that. There isn’t really an answer.
A War Game Without a Gun, Styled Beautifully
The Caribou Trail does something unique for the genre: you’re not fighting. Rather than putting you behind a rifle, the game has you moving through the spaces soldiers occupied for the majority of their time, rather than the small moments that history remembers. It’s in contrast to the guns-first approach, that every other war game I have played takes. And to me, it was welcome.
By keeping the violence at arm’s length, the game pulls you deeper into the story. I wasn’t thinking about the next firefight, I was thinking about the two blokes walking beside me. For a story focused on the cost of war, that’s exactly where your attention should be.
Visually, the game is styled similarly to Unreliable Narrators first game, Two Falls, and draws easy comparisons to Firewatch. The art style feels intentional, opting for a stylised look over photorealism, complementing the tone of the narrative rather than competing with it.
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Leaving Empty-Handed
The Gallipoli campaign ended without victory for the Allies. Somewhere between 44,000 and 58,000 Allied soldiers died in what was a military defeat, with forces withdrawing having barely advanced beyond their positions from the first day of landings. The Caribou Trail doesn’t let you forget that. The ending is sombre in the way the history demands, and it landed heavily for me.
For Australians, there are brief moments where our Diggers appear, or are spoken about. It’s not a significant thread, but those flashes of recognition hit differently when you know the weight Gallipoli carries here in Australia.
Fisher, Gordon, and Lonnie deserved a little more time together and that’s genuinely the only complaint worth raising. The characters are well-drawn, but there’s room the game doesn’t quite fill to let Gordon and Fisher stand as fully as Lonnie does. A little more depth would have gone a long way.
Genuinely, the only complaint worth raising is that the trio deserved a little more time together. Lonnie feels like a more well-rounded character than Fisher and Gordon; a little more depth to the b’ys would have gone a long way.
Who Should Play It?
The Caribou Trail isn’t for everyone; if you need complicated gameplay to stay engaged, this isn’t your game. But for fans of narrative experiences, and especially anyone with an interest in WWI history, it’s a quietly powerful few hours.
Gallipoli is a story most Australians grow up knowing. Seeing it told through different eyes — young men from the other side of the world, who were just as far from home — makes it feel fresh without feeling foreign.
Quest Daily scores The Caribou Trail:
9/10
A copy of The Caribou Trail was supplied to Quest Daily for this review.
