Open-world survival games tend to go hand-in-hand with post-apocalyptic settings. What better way to show your survival prowess than in a completely collapsed society? Scrounging for food, having threats that make sense with raiders, mutated creatures, or aliens hunting you down. Most importantly, creating fortifications from scraps to survive. Channel 37’s debut game, The Last Caretaker, takes the post-apocalyptic setting for its first-person survival shooter and adds a really intriguing twist. What if all the humans left, and your role is to help support human life in space… wherever they are.
We got to go hands-on with The Last Caretaker during PAX East 2025 with Co-founder Antti Ilvessuo and Community Manager Jack Pattillo. Firstly, the story is intriguing because of its setting. Being a robot whose whole purpose is to support human life in space, but being the last one around to do this.
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The Last Caretaker takes place on an Earth covered in water while you are trying to find human growth chambers, find and defend resources, and send those humans to space. Its story is one that I want to learn so much more about. But it’s not a narrative-focused experience. If you wish, you can play the game without touching the story, refining the process to grow better and better humans. But the story is there if you go searching.
The world crafted in The Last Caretaker is beautifully serene. It is on a many years later Earth that’s now submerged in water, so there are a lot of questions. But exploring it is going to be a grand one. One of the first things you get is a ship that lets you explore the world. Plus, this ship acting as your base while out in the open seas opens many possibilities for success and failure, specifically with the energy component.
The robot you control runs on electricity, as do the ship’s many features, on top of fuel. Managing those energy levels and finding ways to recharge the ship’s and your batteries adds a unique challenge of survival in a way fitting for a robot surviving in this world. What makes it more fun is how that electricity can be used. Some weapons use electricity as their ammunition. As do specific machines found throughout different facilities, you come across. In The Last Caretaker, you can use the energy directly from your robot to fuel these devices or your weapons. It’ll run your juice out faster, but having the option to leech from yourself in a pinch is pretty ingenious.
The most exciting part of The Last Caretaker is the world itself.
As someone who isn’t usually a fan of survival games, particularly because they feel aimless in an ever-expanding world, Ilvessuo confirmed that the world you’re exploring in The Last Caretaker is set. It’s not procedurally generated, it doesn’t go on forever. And you have missions to complete to reach the ultimate goal of sending new humans to space. All those hints and key lore bits about this world are findable. Not by chance, but by sheer will to explore what this world has for you to find.
So, where does the survival aspect come into play? Well, alien-like creatures will try to attack you in many of the outposts and on the ocean. These leech-like creatures will hop on your ship at night to latch on to you. You’ll need lights on your ship to scare them off. Or on yourself, which drains extra electricity, as a deterrent.
Ilvessuo showed off a particularly creepy nest of bug-like beings, and it would be terrifying to come across them. Plus, defensive robots are protecting something you need to defeat to get around. From what was shown, the gunplay looked sharp. And with the variety of guns, finding strategies to remove each threat will be an intriguing challenge.
Then there is the crafting aspect in The Last Caretaker. Having such a daunting task, you’ll need to craft survival items and new machines to help your mission. And it works well in such an abandoned techno-future. Especially with a tool and machines that can break down just about anything you find (except walls), finding the amount of resources needed to create fuel lines and machinery isn’t such a tough ask.
Plus, breaking down items makes sense in terms of what they give. For example, destroying a tire will give you rubber components. Breaking down a decommissioned robot will give you machine parts and wiring. So, if you know what you need, you’ll just have to find the items that will give it, and they are bountiful, too.
Even with the early look, The Last Caretaker looks very promising, especially for those who are interested in this particular world and all the questions it poses, like, “Are humans still out there?” or “Why am I the last robot left who woke up so late?” The Channel 37 team is doing a lot right, like having a set world to explore that is very vast and interconnected, which would be a great introduction to the survival genre.
The Last Caretaker is coming in Summer 2025 to PC.
