Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 28/Nov 04:01

The Last Caretaker – Preview

Picture this: You’re out on the open water, where metal groans beneath shifting waves and the horizon stretches into a wash of fog and rusted silhouettes. If that’s the kind of imagery that speaks to your imagination, then The Last Caretaker agrees with you. After four years of development, Channel37 Limited’s highly anticipated survival title is in Early Access, bringing exactly that kind of seafaring vibe with it. Is the game ready for the open water yet, or does it sink still? Before we get into The Last Caretaker’s Early Access gameplay, we should take a moment to look at the game’s atmosphere and the way it presents its post-apocalyptic world. This is the aspect that stands out the most about the current build of the game after all. In the story of The Last Caretaker, mankind is gone. At least, that’s what is implied, as the game’s narrative is subtle and relies on environmental storytelling rather than cutscenes or dialogue. The first-person survival crafting game places you in the role of the titular last Caretaker, a solitary robot left on a hauntingly quiet, water-covered Earth. Your goal isn’t just to survive in the remnants of civilisation, but also to restore it, by salvaging resources, powering dormant structures, and nurturing the last “human seeds” scattered across the world. These genetic capsules serve as the final hope for rebirth. With no NPCs or traditional narrative handholding, the world feels abandoned in a believable way, leaving you to draw conclusions from the ruins around you. The world itself reïnforces this feeling of isolation. It consists of an endless sea dotted with rusted towers, decaying platforms, drowned buildings, and isolated industrial complexes. You’d think that a limited diversity in biomes would mean that The Last Caretaker would end up feeling very one-note visually, but the atmosphere is consistently striking thanks to strong lighting, varied weather, and a dynamic day-night cycle. Sunsets cast the ocean in warm reds, storms tilt the ship against choppy water, and nightfall brings a sudden and dramatic shift in tone as hostile creatures begin to emerge. Audio plays a subtle but important role in reinforcing this tone: There is no voice acting, and the soundtrack is understated, leaning toward quiet ambient textures that rarely draw attention to themselves and reïnforce the feeling of isolation. Environmental ambience fleshes out the game’s soundscape: the hum of machinery, metal creaks, distant animal calls, rain hitting the ship, and the gentle churn of engines. It works really well, because although there is always noise surrounding you, you’re still alone at any given time. The game’s core survival loop is rooted in scavenging and recycling. Nearly every object you find can be dismantled into base materials. This recyclable world creates a satisfying gameplay rhythm: collect, break down, craft, and expand. Crafting is streamlined, letting you fabricate missing components quickly without having to navigate several menus. Movement across the world is centred on your ship, a large, upgradable freighter that doubles as your base of operations. Over time, you’ll upgrade and equip your ship with workshop stations, generators, wind turbines, solar panels, purifiers, storage, and manufacturing lines. Before you get to that point though, you’ll need to get it seaworthy. One of your first tasks is restoring its power, after which you set out to explore the vast, cold emptiness of the abandoned sea. Travelling from one point of interest to another is slow but intentionally so: as you’re sailing, you have time to craft and manage your resources. That’s not to say that navigating the waters is risk-free, as sea mines and narrow docking areas still require attention. When you go on land, you’ll find derelict structures to explore and scavenge resources from. A key part of structure exploration is to restore power to them first, an action that involves running cables, connecting batteries and balancing power loads between systems. Getting power up and running feels like solving an environmental puzzle: you’re often working with limited capacity or need to carefully chain generators and switches. These systems are very hands-on and sometimes messy, but they give the game a distinct identity. Resource management is not just limited to structures either – you must also ensure that power remains available to your ship, your tools, and even your own robotic frame. Solar panels, wind turbines, diesel generators, and fuel lines all play a role in sustaining your operations. If there is one gameplay element that could do with some love, it’s combat. When night falls, hostile creatures show up, and you’ll need to defend yourself from these, but as it stands, combat outright falls flat. Your melee attacks feel slow and weightless, with unreliable hitboxes, while ranged weapons drain power too quickly to be useful. Of course, it’s still early days for the game, so hopefully a much-needed rebalancing will make combat more palatable over time. After focusing on the good (atmosphere) and the bad (combat), we inevitably get to the ugly: bugs. Crashes are fairly common, as are visual glitches such as disappearing floors and walls. The game relies on manual saves, and we did lose progress a couple of times due to those issues. Other areas where The Last Caretaker is still suffering from teething problems are the game’s interface, which looks remarkably simplistic and outdated, and a lack of in-game guidance. Still, it’s already a fairly impressive game, even in its current state, and unlike most other Early Access titles of this calibre, you’re also already looking at a fairly sizable build that you can get multiple hours of gameplay out of. Conclusion Already a masterclass in environmental storytelling, there is still plenty of room for growth in The Last Caretaker’s gameplay, in particular when it comes to combat. The game excels at creating an atmosphere of isolation -but not one of loneliness. There is a sense of purpose here, and a message of hope -that even when everything seems lost for humanity, all it takes is a single Caretaker to start things up again. While we’d still say it’s too early to board this ship -it’s too buggy right now-, we highly recommend keeping an eye out for the full release.