14 DAY TRIAL // I have fought poachers, some able to rain down fire on my squad. I took on one alien, hard to damage and able to debuff my troops. I never felt that defeat was coming. But I repeated a whole mission to make sure that my pet Raun was not hurt. And that type of emotional connection is clearly what We Are The Caretakers wants to create.
The title mixes squad-based tactics mechanics with a solid narrative element. It is both developed and published by Heart Shaped Games, available on Steam via its Early Access element.
We Are The Caretakers works on three layers. A headquarters is where players upgrade their units, deal with captured enemies and other choices, work on equipment or recruit new forces. It’s all pretty standard XCOM like concepts, well-executed.
When a mission is launched gamers need to explore a map, split into sectors, using their squads, all in real-time. To move from one area to another the characters need to scout or even remove obstacles. Squads can capture towns for more resources or deal with environmental hazards to achieve objectives.
Enemy forces also roam around or defend a location and when they are engaged We Are The Caretakers moves to a third, tactical, layer. Every character has both stamina and will, along with special moves and more classic attacks. There’s no movement or positioning. The key to taking down enemies is to see what stat they are weak in and then hammer it down. Once a character losses all stamina or will, friendly forces can launch a final attack that decides their fate.
The combat should be a little faster, especially when dealing with under-powered enemies. But when dealing with a boss it takes careful calculation to defeat support troops and use stun effectively before focusing on the main enemy threat.
The three layers all deliver narrative at certain points, focused around a far-future force that protects the natural world and comes under threat from a new enemy. Dialogue is mostly utilitarian but there are interesting hints about the nature of the science fiction setting we are exploring. There are cool dilemmas to deal with and explorations of how nature and humanity interact.
We Are The Caretakers looks intriguing if not exactly good. The stand-out on the presentation front is the music, which is both heroic and worried, underlining the title's themes. The graphics are bright and colorful but make it seems that nothing in the game has substance, everything looks plasticky and somehow unnatural. There’s time to improve in this area.
Conclusion
Heart Shaped Games needs to add some polish when it comes to the way the game looks. For dedicated fans of the genre and those who love the concept and the narrative, they will not matter much. But it would be heartbreaking for them to become the reason that a greater number of players skips We Are The Caretakers.
