I’ll front with you real quick, I’ve never played a game of Caravan. Apparently, neither have half the PC Gamer team, even the ones who sank hundreds of hours into Fallout New Vegas. It seems like there’s a surprising lack of interest in the card game, or, according to a good chunk of the community, it is too stupidly difficult for its own good.
Except, New Vegas director Josh Sawyer thinks you’re all wrong. As reported by GamesRadar, Sawyer responded to a tweet which read “I’mma keep it real with you Fallout New Vegas, I still don’t know how to play Caravan” by writing: “It’s more complicated than Samuel’s Lansquenet [from Pentiment] but not that hard imo”.
When one follower deigned to point out that less than 6% of PC players have the achievement for winning three games of Caravan—the one to win 30 times has only been nabbed by 2% on Steam and is the second-rarest New Vegas achievement on the platform too—Sawyer responded “they should try again imo”.
I mean hey, it’s been 14 years since New Vegas came out. Maybe it’s a lot easier than people seem to remember, or maybe nobody ever bothered to read the rules in the first place. Some have sheepishly admitted to never really getting down with Caravan’s “obtuse” in-game explanation. “I always skip it cuz I never know what I’m doing,” one replier tweeted, while another wrote: “Caravan’s very fun I just think the rules pop up is intimidating for a lot of players (myself included until recently), especially early on into the game”.
A lot of the replies seem surprised at how tough others find it, though. One user said it was simply “Blackjack times three” and another said “I never understood why folks thought it was hard, I got it immediately.” According to this one user, apparently the trick is to “put a bunch of points in luck and then just hit buttons”. Who knows, maybe give that one a try.
As a well-documented tutorial hater, I can almost guarantee you that I would never learn how to play Caravan or win a single game. I’ll happily remain in the 98% of card game losers forever, heaven forbid I have to read something for more than 10 seconds. Sorry, Sawyer.