The Last Caretaker – Humanity’s Final Guardian

• DEVELOPER: Channel37 Ltd
• PUBLISHER: Channel37 Ltd
• PLATFORMS: PC
• GENRE: Survival
• RELEASE DATE: November 6, 2025
• STARTING PRICE: TBA
• REVIEWED VERSION: PC

From seeing it behind closed doors at Gamescom to demoing it at Steam Next Fest and finally its Early Access release, I’ve been anticipating The Last Caretaker for a long time. This is a game that tries something truly unique within the survival genre. While my initial impressions were positive, the current version reveals a more complex picture: it certainly has some great parts, but it also comes with a significant number of drawbacks.

The Last Caretaker takes place ages after a huge flood covered the world, leaving giant human buildings buried under the endless ocean. You play as the titular character, a machine built to save what’s left of humankind. Your job is to search the drowned world for human “seeds”, start up the Lazarus Complex (a safe ark), and manage the rebirth of the human race.

To do this, you must care for the seeds through incubation, managing their food, and adding back lost human memories by finding broken stories from the past. This mission is difficult because of rogue machines, dangerous weather, and system failures that constantly threaten the fragile seeds you are protecting.

The Good

One of the game’s strongest points is its massive open world. From the very beginning, it makes you feel wonderfully alone, surrounded by diverse landmarks and structures to explore. There is a deep sense of progression; as you continue, you improve gradually but steadily, giving a consistent feeling of growth and accomplishment. Unlike traditional survival games, the challenge here isn’t just about eating or drinking. You manage electricity, fuel, gas, water, and other resources, which adds a refreshing and very different approach to survival. The ship, a crucial part of exploration, feels alive and vulnerable — you must maintain it to traverse the world effectively.

Gameplay is continuously engaging. There’s always something to do, whether it’s exploring new areas, managing resources, or experimenting with technology. The building and crafting mechanics are also straightforward and intuitive. You can disassemble almost anything, collect materials easily, and the game never leaves you feeling lost or missing crucial resources.

It encourages experimentation, particularly in connecting systems and optimizing outputs. The biotechnology, 3D printing, renewable energy sources, including wind turbines, solar panels, and other machinery, adds depth and versatility, giving you freedom in how you approach challenges. Exploration feels rewarding as the world constantly offers new discoveries, and the auto-save function combined with manual saving ensures your progress is safe.

Combat and skills are another highlight. The game offers a decent variety of weapons, from pistols and electrical guns to flamethrowers, giving enough options for different playstyles. The skill system allows you to improve capacity, health, energy efficiency, and pressure management — essential for underwater exploration, which is very important. Progression is well-paced; the game gradually draws you in and rarely feels repetitive. Once immersed, it’s hard to put down.

The Bad

The main story progresses through mandatory quests and missions. While these are necessary for advancement, you have the freedom to take your time and prepare before tackling them. As you complete these missions, you begin to piece together what truly happened to the world. Exploration is often rewarded with hidden logs and secrets scattered across the map, allowing you to approach the game and its mysteries in your own way. But it’s very minimal and doesn’t really stick out as much as I hoped it would.

However, the game does have several downsides, mostly technical. Optimization is inconsistent: while the game looks solid on the lowest settings and medium is the sweet spot, high or ultra settings can cause severe performance issues, including crashes and FPS drops in busy areas. Early-game enemies are underwhelming, with weak AI that often gets stuck on walls. Even later threats, like moving and shooting balls, remain relatively easy to handle.

While the game does not hold your hand, some missions could be better explained. For instance, finding a hidden underwater entrance can become frustrating without more in-game guidance or logs. Bugs and glitches are frequent as well. I encountered situations where dismantling a large shark yielded no rewards, water visuals often clip through the ship despite realistic waves, and late-game scenarios can feel chaotic without careful planning.

Another missing quality-of-life feature is crafting directly from chests, which would save time and reduce unnecessary micromanagement. Finally, while the world is beautiful and open, it can feel quite empty. Landmarks are scattered, and there’s minimal marine life or small environmental details to make the world feel truly alive. Enemies also lack proper variety, which diminishes the sense of a living, dynamic world.

Worth it if You’re Fan of Survival Games

Considering it’s releasing in Early Access, we can expect plenty of new additions to expand the gameplay, including more locations, balancing and management options. Without a doubt, the game has the potential to become something truly special if it keeps heading in the right direction.

The Last Caretaker will offer you a special and fun survival experience with deep management systems, rewarding exploration, and an interesting core idea. Its focus on managing energy, resources, and saving humankind feels new and fresh in the survival genre. The crafting, building, and trying new things are easy to use and pay off well, making progress feel important.

However, the game is held back by technical problems, bugs, a small number of enemy types, and a world that often feels empty. For players with a good PC who like careful resource management and exploration, this is a great game. If the developers improve performance and make the world feel fuller, it could easily become amazing.

Review copy provided by the publisher

3.8