The Last Caretaker Review — Ocean Survival-Crafting with a Soul
A tactile survival-crafter where you pilot a ragged mobile base, nurture human seeds in the Lazarus Complex and try to launch humanity to the stars. Beautiful, addictive—and still rough around the edges in Early Access.
I sunk dozens of hours into The Last Caretaker because its mix of slow-burn exploration, boat-as-base gameplay and the weirdly touching task of reviving humans hooked me. If you like Subnautica’s wonder, The Long Dark’s pacing and a dash of Death Stranding-esque delivery, this one’s for your backlog—just expect Early Access bumps.
You play as a reawakened machine roaming a flooded Earth in a customizable mobile base-boat. Core loop: explore POIs, scrap and craft components, balance limited power and fuel, and use cables and pipelines to reactivate ancient infrastructure. The Lazarus Complex is the narrative hub—incubating human seeds requires managing temperature, nutrient flow and memory integration, which adds an unexpectedly emotional layer to the survival loop. Defenses, automated turrets and tactical countermeasures matter when storms or rogue machines attack, and eventually you’re hunting launch codes and rebuilding the MOSES systems to get humans into orbit. I loved the tactile physics—throwing junk into grinders, wrestling with cables and watching your ship bob in storms feels lively. Combat can feel underbaked (hit feedback and enemy variety aren’t always satisfying) and inventory/carry limits force a lot of back-and-forth, which will either be “fun micromanagement” or “annoying grind” depending on your patience. Important note: it’s Early Access—expect crashes, optimization hiccups and balancing tweaks while the devs iterate.
The Last Caretaker is a haunting, tactile survival game with a rare emotional core and a great foundation. Buy it for the loop and setting, but treat it like a work-in-progress—performance and combat need polish before it reaches its full potential.
Pros
- Lovely, atmospheric world and satisfying visual moments (sunsets on the rusted megastructures).
- Deep, tactile crafting loop—the boat-as-base, cables and physical scavenging are genuinely fun.
- A rare emotional hook: nurturing human seeds and launching them gives the survival loop real purpose.
Cons
- Performance and stability issues—optimization, crashes and occasional physics jank are common in EA.
- Clunky combat and inventory/carry limitations; some UI and feedback need polish.
Player Opinion
Players rave about the addictive exploration-crafting loop, the cozy-but-epic mood and the boat-as-base systems—many say they lost whole evenings to it. The loudest complaints are about performance, crashes and some systems feeling grindy (carry weight, repetitive scrapping). If you loved Subnautica, Raft or slow-burn survival like The Long Dark, you’ll likely enjoy this—just wait for patches if you need buttery-smooth framerates.