The Caribou Trail PS5 Review: A Moving WWI Story With Uneven Gameplay

A First World War Walking Simulator with Heart

Aidan Minter finds an engaging story and memorable characters in The Caribou Trail, although repetition and moments of weak immersion hold it back. For the separate PC perspective, read Ronny Fiksdahl’s review, including 32:9 ultrawide gameplay.

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5 (PS5)

The Caribou Trail is a military themed walking simulator developed by Montreal based indie dev Unreliable Narrators and Manavoid Entertainment, and tells the story of three soldiers serving in the Newfoundland Regiment at the Gallipoli Peninsula during the First World War.

The Caribou Trail — Trailer and Gameplay

Watch the trailer or gameplay video on YouTube

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You play as Fisher or ‘Fish’ as he’s known by his nickname, one of the 487 survivors of Gallipoli, the brutal World War 1 campaign which saw allied forces (British, French, Australian, New Zealand, and Indian troops) try to force open the Dardanelles strait, capture Constantinople, and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The game starts out with Fish serving in France in 1916 at Beaumont-Hamel, another decisive and controversial battle where roughly ninety percent of the Newfoundland Regiment’s attacking soldiers became casualties in a disastrous and bloody 30-minute assault during the Battle of the Somme.

Narratively, The Caribou Trail pulls you into the story in a way that makes you feel connected to the other characters, in this instance Gordo who used enlistment to avoid criminal charges back home and the fresh faced Lon who Gordo has taken under his wing to guide him through the daily aspects of life in the army. The game does well to sell the camaraderie and jovial relationship between this trio of soldiers, each with their own distinct personalities which, in turn  helps deliver the well written script.

Life on the Frontline

Setting the scene is Suvla bay, a wide bay on the Aegean coast of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey and it’s here where the story takes place. The Trail of the Caribou commemorates the Newfoundland Regiment’s costly human contribution during the First World War with six caribou memorials created by London-born sculptor and artist Captain Basil Gotto at different battlefield and memorial sites across Europe.

Let it be said that anyone looking for combat action will be disappointed, The Caribou Trail is a more of a walking simulator and story led game where the player can make choices to specific actions and choose the order of conversation where it applies. If anything it perfectly captures the mundane aspects and boredom of serving soldiers behind the front lines as they live day by day in camp. There are certain missions you undertake within that structure to break the camp monotony, find a crashed pilot in no man's land or retrieve I.D tags from fallen troops. This means that the narrative aspect of the gameplay loop might give you three paths to get to a specific location, you’ll end up at the same spot but the path you took has absolutely no real consequence.

Visually The Caribou Trail is similar to games like The Long Dark or Sea of Thieves and this creates its own charm and helps the game set itself apart. However, this is where I feel the game also fell a little short. The animated look and feel broke some of the immersion, especially during the mission exploring no man’s land for I.D tags from the bodies of fallen allied soldiers. The grim nature of the task felt relatively sanitised and in terms of game design, go to point A, press action button, go to point B, press action button isn’t overly challenging for the player but is very much in the realm of a walking simulator where player participation is more a conduit for the broader story to find its mark.

The Sanitised Horrors of War

The relatively clean look of a shattered battlefield, filled with dead soldiers removes the sense of tension and foreboding one would expect. That’s not to say I expected to be elbow deep in blood and entrails, but for me, when I’m drawn in to the characters so well,  it's moments like this that are visually jarring when they don’t connect or deliver a sense of realism, even in this art style. Additionally, collecting a map from your commanding officer, the one which you’ll use to navigate to different parts of the ridgeline camp is handed over to your character but the officer has nothing in his hand, its smaller details like this that break that connection, it's a small gripe and certainly not a game wrecker but irksome given the power of the PS5.

Repetition and Immersive Storytelling

Various tasks move the story forward, some become a little too repetitious, like cooking tack, the hard dense cracker that was a staple of the allied forces diet, while the fireside banter helps build character I felt I was more focused on seeing how small I could mash the tack in the cooking pot to pay any attention to what people were actually talking about. Again, it's a small gripe but one that comes back to game design. Games like The Caribou Trail are perfectly suited to PC but feel a little wasted on console to an audience that might not appreciate the historical significance and passion behind the project.

I’d like to have had more variation of things to do since its a very short game, in many respects the tasks themselves weren’t the issue, more, how they were delivered, and while walking simulators with a heavy emphasis on story and character don’t usually get very complicated in their gameplay design, variation and a better cohesive connection to the game world would have improved my experience tenfold.

It’s not that The Caribou Trail is a bad game, far from it, it's a very engaging respectful narrative led story set within a defining  moment in military history. The choice led aspects of the larger story beats give the player an attachment to the broader narrative. Smaller more intimate aspects of the setting give a historically valuable insight into life within the Newfoundlander Regiment (Blue putties explained!) during the Ottoman conflict in World War 1.

In Summary

Overall, it’s one of the more interesting walking simulator games you’ll find, certainly up there with the likes of Firewatch and Dear Esther and definitely one if you’re a history buff. You can see that developer Unreliable Narrators had a lot of passion for this game, the attention to back story, setting and historical significance goes without saying, it’s just a shame that it's a short lived experience and one where the immersion can fall short at times. As a respectful, well written game set within World War 1 it delivers a great story with a superb soundtrack to back it up.

We’ve also reviewed Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina), another narrative adventure from Unreliable Narrators.

The Caribou Trail

Release: May 14, 2026 (PC); July 7, 2026 (PS5)

Genre: Narrative Adventure / First-Person Exploration

Developer / Publisher: Unreliable Narrators, Manavoid Entertainment / Unreliable Narrators, Indie Asylum (PC); ManaVoid Entertainment Inc. (PS5)

Platforms: PlayStation 5 · Windows PC (Steam)

Related Reading

The Caribou Trail — Ronny’s PC Review (32:9 Ultrawide)

Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina) Review

Best Walking Simulator Games to Play in 2026

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