This is an unusual one: a survival game set in a flooded world that’s maybe Earth, where you’re a robot known as a Caretaker whose purpose is to grow humans in pods, imbibe them with memories and launch them into space (where they will presumably live). But there’s an air of mystery over the whole thing. You appear to be, as the game’s title tells us, the Caretaker, and you’ve been reactivated at a point in time where you’re not sure what, if anything, still exists. The sea-based facility you ‘wake up’ on is in disrepair and as you set about re-powering and repairing it, and boating around on the sea nearby, a bigger question forms: what is going on?
The Last CaretakerDeveloper: Channel37Publisher: Channel37Release: Summer 2025 on PC (early access), consoles at a later date
This game comes from a collection of former RedLynx developers and their newish (created in 2021) seven-person studio Channel37, which counts Antti Ilvessuo – the original creator of motorbike game Trials – among its founders. You might remember Ilvessuo from Ubisoft’s E3 2018 conference where he was clad in a white jumpsuit and barrelled onto the stage to break the podium, as part of a planned stunt. He’s a character. And it’s Ilvessuo who reveals The Last Caretaker to me in a video call, with former Rooster Teeth presenter Jack Pattillo demoing the game.
Excitingly, The Last Caretaker isn’t like anything I’ve seen before. It has elements I recognise and I’m sure you will too, but they’re combined in a way that feels fresh. When you begin, for example, it’s a sort of first-person puzzle game. You’re in the bowels of a facility with no power so you need to work out a way to incrementally turn it all back on. You notice unplugged cables, which are a recurring theme in the game – except they’re less like cables from day-to-day life and more like hosepipes firefighters use – only you can’t plug them in because they’re not long enough. Obstacle one, then, is finding extra cabling and attaching it so that you can.
The Last Caretaker – Announcement Trailer Watch on YouTube
Now the doors have power, you can open them and begin exploring the rest of the facility. As you do, you’ll see robots like you broken and strewn across hallways, which seems ominous. You’ll also discover other plug-in points where you can do things like recharge your health-like energy by plugging into them via your belly button (it looks like, at least) and save your game. As it stands, The Last Caretaker is a single-player game. There are online ambitions, Ilvessuo says, but they’re an idea for another time.