I purchased The Last Caretaker in March this year and have played it for over 160 hours, with plenty of life still left in it. That comes in at a current cost of about $0.24 an hour.

The game is in early access, but entirely playable. It has been available since November last year and update 3 had been released just before I started to play. An impactful update 3.5 was released in April, an impactful update 4 was released in May, and an impactful update 5 was released in June. While I have complained about having to return to locations I had previously completed, these updates have had lots of worthwhile new content and new game play.

The Last Caretaker is developed by a small independent studio called Channel 37. I don’t know all the ins and outs of how small and how independent it is, but I did note comments suggesting it has a dozen or less developers.

I expect some big studio or venture capital group will come along and ruin it all, but in the meantime, I hope to enjoy many more updates.

For all the things added to the game in Update 5, I have been primarily focused on the Wall Sockets. You need to route various resources through locations using hoses. The physics behind these hoses is a bit skewed, and they tend to loop through floors and appear where they shouldn’t. Using chains of wall sockets I have been busy cleaning up my boat and bases of these loops.