Camper Van: Make it Home

Me and my wife have always had a dream of setting out on an adventure in a camper van and just exploring some of the most scenic locations we can find. So I was delighted when an email landed in my inbox to introduce me to Camper Van: Make it Home. A cosy game where the entire premise is to do exactly what I’ve just described, with the addition of strangely unpacking your belongings when you’ve arrived at your destination. But it was this unpacking that actually attracted me to the game more so, with my time with Unpacking being an enjoyable one, I thought I would have the best of both worlds wrapped up in one game, living the dream in my little camper van mixed with the satisfaction from Unpacking. It was the serotonin hit I was hoping for, even if the narrative was a very, very simple affair, told through a life journal which is presented before each new location.

As the title alludes to, this game is about making the space inside your camper van a home with the main objective of unpacking and finding a place for all of your belongings, food, equipment, clothes, and so on. Placing items was very satisfying, especially when you found the place it was meant to go. In some circumstances, I did struggle to figure out where I was meant to put some items, ending up just leaving them on the floor. Hanging up clothes was surprisingly very pleasing; seeing them automatically hang from folded and when other items snapped into their location certainly put a smile on my face. The right side of the screen houses a bar with five to six icons on it. These icons represent each section that you need to unpack. Click on these and one item from the imaginary well will appear for you to place, and as you progress, the icon will start to fill, showing you how much progress you have made in that particular one. Each section is broken down into certain subjects like bathroom, clothing, kitchen, food, outside equipment, and so on. It’s an elegant and very workable system, which was never confusing, and the objectives were very clear, especially as each completed one would disappear, clearly showing what was left to unpack.

It’s not just inside the camper van you can unpack; the outside area is also free for you to lay out your belongings on. Picnic blankets and baskets, chairs, rugs, cushions and candles can be placed to give a beautiful, cosy area. At one stage you bring along your dog, so you can make a little bed for them to rest on too. I also found shimmering plants or flowers around the van in each location that you can pick, though I’m not sure what they do, as I couldn’t find them in my inventory afterwards, so I guess these are for some sort of achievement that I obviously didn’t manage to pop.

It’s outside the camper van that I wanted to properly test the limitations of the game. For one stage I laid every single item out on the grass instead of placing them in their respective homes to see if the game would allow me to move on afterwards, which it did so quite happily. Such is the freedom of the game; you can place any item anywhere and you can move on. This freedom does give your imagination a little push, with me trying to find the most random or obscure place that I could find to leave a hairbrush or phone.

When it comes to the camper vans, your first one is a modest affair. Small and compact, it’s a budget option but still does the job. It’s a good way to kick off your unpacking adventure, easing you into the mechanics and the believable storage places to look for. At certain points, the van will be upgraded; you, the player, have no involvement in this; it just happens. But you’ll have more space and storage options for your items. Great, I hear you say, but more space means more items, which some do get quite bulky, so it was still a challenge to find homes for the belongings, especially with these new, bulkier items. By the end of the game, I still had no idea where to put that blooming guitar case!

Customisation is here too, allowing you to choose the paint of your camper vans, the colour of the dashboard and seats, plus your preference of rear-view mirror dongle. You can also customise the living area with flooring, walls, furniture styles and colour schemes all available to really make it your home. I would have liked this area to have been a little more expansive, as it did feel slightly limiting with the options available. A few more patterns and colour schemes would have been very welcome.

Controls were a slight downer for me. If you are planning on playing this on a laptop with a mouse, then I can’t see you having any issues, and while there is full controller support, it’s here where it gets the most cumbersome. I did spend a large amount of time pressing the wrong button, panning instead of zooming or forgetting what button did what. I can’t fault the developers for how they went about mapping the controls; it’s just a lot to remember on a gamepad or Steam Deck and looking down at the buttons to see what I was pressing did take me out of the experience.

With that being the only low point, one of its highest was in its visuals. Everything looked clean, crisp and authentic in the game’s graphical style. Items were recreated realistically, with me struggling to recognise only a handful; they still held much detail, with glass in particular giving a pleasant effect. The camper vans were also realised beautifully, inside and out, and the care and attention were clearly on show. The highlight was the picturesque locations, with beautiful scenic areas, from grassy fields to mountains. Each was created with loving detail, especially in dusk or evening, giving off the splendour of the location and many times making me wish I could just jump into the screen to live it in real life.

The sound design was also spot on, for the most part leaving authentic ambient sounds to fill up your speakers with birds chirping or wind howling against your van; it gave you the sense of your location and set a welcome tone to the atmosphere. During unpacking you will come across a record player and some vinyls, which will play pleasant instrumental music while you’re scurrying around, fitting in perfectly with your own personal preference on what experience you are after, as you can leave this be and just enjoy the ambiance.