Hands-on with a survival adventure where saving the human race is down to a grownup Wall-E and freighter
This project recieved a coveted SideQuesting TEAM CHOICE AWARD at PAX East 2025!
I knew a little bit about The Last Caretaker, Channel37’s new project, prior to PAX East. I knew that it was a sort of survival game, that it was set in the future, and that it looked aesthetically cool, but I didn’t know how it would actually function. Getting hands-on with the latest build at the event gave me all the clarity I needed, and opened up a lot of intriguing questions about the mystery of the game’s world that I was dying to find out.
The game is set in the far future after the Earth has been flooded. Humanity has been trying to leave the planet, but knowing that moving actual human bodies may not be so easy, mankind opted to send into space the “seeds”, which are basically the embryos and eggs that are to be our salvation, in hopes that they would somehow make it to habitable planets and spaces. When we start the game we don’t quite know what befell our blue orb, but we do feel confident in one thing: we’re very likely the last functional “caretaker” robot on the planet. We learn that quickly, as walking around our oil platform-like hub reveals plenty of other prior caretaker bots that failed in their missions.
The game is presented in first person, and the demo opens without a tutorial. Antti Ilvessuo, Co-Founder of Channel37 and one of the game’s developers, tells us that this is because we need to learn what it is to be a caretaker by doing and experiementing. Much like the opening sequence in Super Mario Bros, we only learn when we react, eventually learning the controls and the principles of the game (and by virtue, its world). The controls feel as expected: we can turn, we can move, we can grab and interact. The demo has us on a keyboard, but controller will be an option too. The only thing the robot can’t do? Jump. Well, not through button presses. Interestingly enough, moving around the environment is pretty free and flowling, but if we grab something like a table or a box they can get hung up on walls or cords or other objects. The caretaker has some AI, of course, so it would just know to avoid obstacles it comes to. Boxes don’t! Tables don’t. They’re just objects, so we have to handle them accordingly. This is most noticeable when I grab a table in one room and try to move to the other side, snagging a glowing cord in the middle and getting stuck.
That glowing cord is vital, actually. Located throughout the world are power lines for electrical and for diesel fuel, and we need to hook things together to get power running. The focus of the demo has us powering a barge in the building’s port, which involves getting to it (we need to find its room) and getting power to it. Because of how easy it is to get distracted in games like this, the developers put in glowing lights to let us know that a button needs to be pressed or an object can be picked up or a cord has power running. The cords are only so long, though, so all of the items we come across can eventually be used to craft into longer cords, into tools, and so on. Though our demo session is techincally being narrated by Ilvessuo, the layout of the area and the nature of the game sort of guides me to discover how to do things on my own. One of the funnier moments comes when I’ve found power for the ship and need to hook it up. I grab the end of a cord and start walking towards the ship, before realizing that I’ve actually hooked it onto myself by accident. I’m now powering an object instead of the other way around. I unhook the line from my stomach and plug it into the ship, eventually hearing an audible “POP!” when the fuel pod has run out. It’s these kinds of little queues that the game uses to talk back to us about what and how we’re doing.
As I launch the ship and take off into open water, my portion of the demo ends. Success! But wait, there’s more! Though we’re alone, we’re not ALONE alone, as strange robots and drones inhabit other platforms and a really violent biomess substance can be found on others. HINT: bio material is crucial to helping sustain the seeds before they’re sent off into space, so it’ll probably be important to seek those out too. Finally, as a bit of a tease, Ilvessuo dives our caretaker into the ocean to show off a huge underwater world full of decayed buildings and secrets to find. None of it is randomly generated, either; this is a bespoke world, hand-designed to make sure it has a full story to tell.
We’ll get to learn that story when The Last Caretaker arrives on PC later this year and consoles (PlayStation, Xbox and Switch 2) afterward.
SideQuesting had a chance to go hands-on with the project at PAX East. This video first appeared on The SideQuest LIVE for May 13, 2025.
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