Fancy a first-person shooter set in World War I? Then you’ll have to look elsewhere. The Caribou Trail from Unreliable Narrators may be set during the Great War, but it sees itself much more as a narrative adventure with survival elements. A demo for the game is available now.

As awful as wars are, and as fed up with them as I am, historical wars still have a side to them that’s genuinely fascinating.

That historical and psychological interest was actually the whole reason I used to play World War shooters in the first place. You know the ones: Call of Duty 2, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and the rest. Back then, at least, you didn’t have some gun-toting banana or Homer Simpson jumping into your sights.

That’s why I think The Caribou Trail is made for players like me. Sure, I wouldn’t mind a round of "putting holes in virtual steel helmets", but the really interesting part here is the story about loss, survival, camaraderie, and psychological strain. And you can get a taste of that right now in the playable demo on Steam.

A narrative trip into trench warfare

I’ve got a few more details for you, so you can decide whether downloading 7.4 gigabytes is worth your time. The Caribou Trail is set in Italian Gallipoli in 1915. At the center of the story is Fisher (apparently the budget didn’t stretch to a first name)—a young man from Newfoundland who’s forced to head off to war alongside a few friends.

There, Fisher fights for the British side alongside Lonnie and Gordo, the names of his two buddies. At first, it all feels like a brief "adventure" to the boys, but it soon turns into a grinding ordeal right on the edge of madness. In telling that story, the game blends historical testimony with fiction and shines a light on a World War I front that rarely gets much attention.

Core features promise an immersive ride

For a game like this, it’s no surprise that The Caribou Trail is strictly single-player. Presumably to make the experience feel more immediate, it uses a first-person perspective; there are also weapons and combat mechanics in the mix. That means The Caribou Trail sometimes looks like a shooter, but the core features make the developers’ actual intentions pretty clear:

• A focus on survival instead of heroics
• Friendship and humor as a contrast to war
• Folklore and psychological horror
• An original score and immersive sound design

The wartime action is presented in a semi-stylized visual style inspired by archival photography. You can see that especially clearly in the two screenshots below. I do think the stripped-down look is an interesting idea in principle, but I can’t help wondering whether this style really helps the immersion.

Then again, it’ll probably be the usual thing: once the story has you hooked, you stop caring so much about rough edges in the presentation.

Film or game?

There’s still one other question I always ask with story-driven games: is there actually anything to play here? Because when I’m in the mood for a film, I’ll watch a film.

The answer with The Caribou Trail seems to be somewhere in the middle. The focus is on narrative exploration and atmospheric sequences rather than classic action gameplay loops. Officially, the game mentions things like:

• Exploring the camp between missions
• Moving through trenches and no man’s land
• Cutting through barbed wire
• Recon and evacuation missions
• Interacting with comrades, campfire stories
• Moral dilemmas such as the choice to pull the trigger or not
• Explicitly no score or kill count

That doesn’t sound completely passive, but it’s pretty clear you need to be in the mood for a grim World War I story. I already had my share of "fun" with 1916: The Unknown War years ago. This looks like it’s heading down a similar path, probably with less horror vibes.

As things stand right now, The Caribou Trail is only coming to PC and PlayStation 5. On the latter version, offline play is enabled.