The game follows Sauge, a young girl who comes back to her home planet of Cigalo after receiving a distress call from her sister Garance, who went missing six years ago. Sauge, with the help of her friend Nèfle, and the citizens of Cigalo, searches around the planet in her yellow van for clues on what happened to her sister. In her quest, Sauge will learn about the history of Cigalo and how the Consortium influenced its development. However, a mysterious witch constantly stalks Sauge throughout her quest and eventually starts interfering once Sauge looks like she has a shot at entering TARAASK, a Consortium facility that is surrounded by a magnetic storm.
The gameplay consists of exploring a large 3D map on foot and with the van, all while collecting parts to build more tools, which will open up more of the world. There is no game over condition, but many quests are time-sensitive and must be completed before advancing the story.
This game contains examples of:
- Ability Required to Proceed: The story proceeds in parts, locked behind various upgrades to the van.
- The first upgrade is a scanner that can detect components and other electronics.
- Next is a grapple that can be used to yank down fragile doors, pull buried objects from the dirt, and form improvised ziplines.
- Sauge then gets a motorized pulley that can travel across ziplines in any direction.
- The scanner is then upgraded to hack locked pressure pads and Toaster terminals, the latter revealing small bits of the story.
- Finally, the grapple is upgraded with a power cable so the van can be used to power inactive junction boxes.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- You can return to your vehicle from any point on the map after a short delay, except during certain parts of the story.
- If you manage to pin your vehicle somehow and can't move it, an option appears to teleport back to the garage.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Some characters are anthropomorphic frogs. They wear full-body outfits but no footwear.
- Bottomless Fuel Tanks: Sauge's van never needs to be refilled no matter how far it travels on the open world map. While it's possible that it runs on electricity, its battery never needs to be recharged, even when it's being used as a temporary power source for various devices.
- Computer Virus:
- The antenna upgrade allows Sauge to use the van to load a computer virus into biometric locks, which are indicated by purple holograms.
- The robots of Cigalo have to be careful with the Internet because of a Consortium virus that targets them and forces them to shut down.
- Defector from Decadence: The Consortium is an evil corporation that ruined Cigalo's environment for the sake of the Helios Project, but not all of the employees are evil. Two of them, Rose and Kèa, were once Consortium employees before quitting, with Rose living as an ordinary civilian and Kèa joining the Sand Witches to rebel against the Consortium.
- Due to the Dead:
- In Lamarr's sidequest, they want to create a tomb for their robot child, Lovelace, who was killed by the Consortium's virus. Sauge can help by finding flowers, finding a musical instrument that Lovelace used, and using the van's grappling hook to pull the tomb door close.
- Just outside the TARAASK facility, Kèa built gravestones for Garance, the other Sand Witches, and the Consortium's victims.
- Ecocidal Antagonist:
- According to Hyla, Cigalo used to be full of swamps that are fit for the Reinetos to inhabit. After the Consortium took over the planet, much of it became a dry wasteland for the sake of building facilities for the Helios Project.
- Downplayed with the Sand Witches. They caused the storm around TARAASK and rendered the surrounding area uninhabitable, but believed it was necessary in order to make the Consortium leave the planet, giving the rest of the planet outside of the storm area a chance to recover.
- Evil, Inc.: The Consortium is a MegaCorp that colonizes planets for profit. While they do offer technological benefits to the citizens of the planets, they also have no problem with damaging the planet's environment and outright abandoning planets once they are no longer profitable. Cigalo is now basically a garbage dump of the Consortium's old hardware and the ocean is mentioned to be very polluted. Their robot workers aren't treated any better, and when the ones on Cigalo are no longer useful, the Consortium placed a virus on the Toaster network in order to infect and forcibly shut down most of the robots. They are also powerful enough to hire bounty hunters to target people who threaten their business in any way, as shown by how several NPCs live in fear of being found by the Consortium.
- The Extremist Was Right: The Sand Witch, Kèa, obstructs Garance, Nèfle, and Sauge for trying to go into TARAASK. Sauge eventually comes to agree that keeping the storm around TARAASK active is a Necessarily Evil action on the Sand Witches' part, since it prevents the Consortium from returning to Cigalo to further ruin the planet's environment. However, she still holds Kèa in contempt for antagonizing Garance and making the latter desperate enough to fly into TARAASK, causing her to die.
- Falling Damage: Averted. Sauge and her van can fall from any height while being no worse for wear.
- Floral Theme Naming : All of the human inhabitants of Cigalo are named after herbs, plants or fruits. Some examples include Sauge, Abricot, Nefle, and Garance.
- Frog Men: The Reinetos, the native inhabitants of Cigalo, are two legged frog who communicate via « Mycellium », a root network that's all over the planet.
- Greater-Scope Villain: There are no active Consortium employees on Cigalo anymore, but that corporation is responsible for the planet's current state of ruin by destroying the environment for the sake of the Helios Project. Their actions also caused the Sand Witches to become desperate enough to create a magnetic storm around the TARAASK facility, all to force the Consortium off the planet.
- Humans Are Bastards: The robot trapped in the Hydropost distrusts humanity because the corporation that created them, the Consortium, is motivated by greed. Sauge can change their opinion somewhat by opening the door before taking their D-Rink, otherwise taking the D-Rink first will reinforce the robot's disdain towards humanity.
- Improvised Zipline: After building the pulley tool, Sauge can use it to travel across ziplines, regardless of the ziplines' angles. Her van's grappling hook can also be used as a zipline once it hooks to something. This works even if the grappling hook cable is being used as an electric cable.
- Indestructible Edible: Curry wants Sauge to collect Tri-anjl sandwiches for a recipe. Although the sandwiches are over 30 years old, they use advanced preservatives that allow them to still be edible at that age. All of them somehow still have their packaging intact despite being scattered throughout Cigalo's ruins.
- Last-Second Ending Choice: The game has two endings depending on Sauge's choice in the TARAASK facility. This choice initiates the ending scenes immediately due to the urgency of the TARAASK facility's imminent explosion.
- If Sauge chooses to enter the receptacle, she and Nèfle will speak with Garance's digital ghost that the Sand Witches managed to preserve. Unfortunately, Nèfle decides to stay behind in the exploding facility in order to be Together in Death with Garance.
- If Sauge chooses to activate the self-destruct protocol without entering the receptacle, she and Nèfle live, but give up on their only chance to talk to Garance's digital ghost.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Garance, or rather, her digital ghost, sends a distress signal from her ship because she wanted to see Sauge and Nèfle before the TARAASK breaks. This causes Sauge and Nèfle to venture into TARAASK, leading to Nèfle being in a position to try to shut off the storm around the facility. Nèfle's haphazard way of doing it would have resulted in major damage to all the nearby villages. Fortunately, Kèa provides Sauge with a card to activate the self-destruct sequence, which would ensure that the explosion is more contained to the TARAASK facility.
- Non-Human Non-Binary: Subverted. Some of the Reinetos are referred to with gender neutral pronouns but we also have a human non binary character with Nèfle
- Permanently Missable Content: Some quests in the Toaster app have a clock symbol to indicate that they will disappear once the player advances the story. Attempting to advance the story will cause the game to remind the player of any unfinished time sensitive quests.
- Ramp Jump: Several ramps are placed around the map, which the Sauge can use to launch her van into the air. They're never used for actually crossing an obstacle, though using them all is necessary for an achievement.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The Sand Witches are an organization that seeks to protect the planet of Cigalo from being exploited by the Consortium. They were once allies of the Reinetos, but they become more extreme in their methods, to the point where they tamper with the Consortium's TARAASK facility to create a huge magnetic storm. While this drives out the Consortium, it also renders a large region of the planet uninhabitable, which the witches consider Necessarily Evil in order to keep the Consortium from returning. The witches go as far as to threaten the Reinetos into keeping their existence a secret. In the present, the last remaining witch, Kèa, stalks and intimidates anyone who tries to go to TARAASK, to the point where she sets up signal jammers all over the playable map in order to make it harder to get into the forbidden area.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Downplayed. Some of the robots have achieved consciousness and developed their own society, causing them to have humanlike mentalities despite physically not resembling humans. A later quest requests you gather all the conscious robot so they can go live in a cloud hidden away from the Consortium and form a singularity.
- Tsundere: Safran initially treats Sauge coldly for leaving Cigalo for the space cities, but later admits that he just misses her and quickly reconciles with her.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- The Sand Witches are the ones responsible for causing the storm around TARAASK and the last remaining witch, Kèa, obstructs Sauge's quest to explore the inside of the storm. This is because the storm prevents the Consortium from further exploiting Cigalo for resources and destroying the environment, and the witches don't want that corporation to return. However, the storm killed a lot of people and rendered a large region of the planet uninhabitable.
- Nèfle and Garance want to stop the storm around TARAASK in the hopes that the Consortium will return to Cigalo, revitalize the planet's economy, and increase the standard of living, even if it means the planet is exploited and the population has to live under the Consortium's thumb.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In the Hydropost room where the robot is trapped, they will ask Sauge to open the door, but also warn her not to take their stuff. If Sauge takes the D-Rink first, the robot will be upset and develop a lower opinion of humanity. If Sauge opens the door first, this trope is averted and the robot will give Sauge the D-Rink as a reward.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Consortium created a virus to shut down any of their robot workers that are still on Cigalo, a planet that the corporation abandoned. This is partially because they fear the robots will form a singularity and surpass them. As a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, their mistreatment of their robots motivates them to seek a singularity in order to protect themselves.