We Are The Caretakers

We Are The Caretakers is a PC sci-fi strategy RPG that combines squad management, RTS-with-pause field operations, narrative choices, and turn-based JRPG combat. Steam still lists the game under its original name, with no verified rebrand or replacement edition. You lead an Afrofuturist resistance defending the endangered Raun while balancing reputation, research, alliances, funds, and the survival of your world.

A strategy RPG with three connected layers

The game moves between a headquarters, a real-time field map, and turn-based encounters. At headquarters, you recruit Caretakers, improve facilities, research technologies, manage relationships, and prepare squads for the next mission. On the field, your teams explore strategic maps, secure locations, respond to threats, and protect wildlife.

When hostile forces are engaged, the action shifts into deliberate combat. The battlefield is not a conventional 4X map or a traditional grid-only tactics screen. Instead, RTS-with-pause exploration leads into focused turn-based encounters, creating a hybrid structure that rewards both operational planning and careful ability selection.

The campaign centers on Shadra, the Raun, and the collapse of a massive energy barrier separating the region from a wider universe. Poachers, political pressures, ecological danger, and a mysterious alien presence all compete for your attention.

Squad building, classes, and encounter decisions

Your organization can contain hundreds of recruitable characters with different traits, weaknesses, abilities, and personalities. The wider Caretaker roster can be arranged into up to nine exploring parties, allowing you to divide responsibilities across missions instead of relying on one fixed team.

Character development is organized around more than 30 job classes and a large collection of abilities. A squad might need durable frontline units, support specialists, ranged damage, investigators, or characters suited to negotiation and field logistics. The strongest team is not always the one with the highest combat power; mission objectives and faction pressures can make utility equally important.

Combat asks you to balance force with diplomacy. Enemies can be defeated, detained, bribed, or handled through other context-sensitive decisions, and those choices feed into the wider reputation system. A ruthless approach may solve an immediate threat while damaging future cooperation, whereas restraint can preserve alliances but leave problems unresolved.

Threat also matters inside encounters. Positioning, stamina, mental defenses, character abilities, and the timing of attacks all influence whether a battle remains controlled or spirals into a costly exchange. This is a game about managing pressure rather than simply selecting the most damaging command every turn.

Reputation, research, and the Caretaker headquarters

Every major decision can affect how other groups view the Caretakers. Reputation influences access to support and changes the political texture of the campaign, making the resistance feel like an organization operating within a fragile network of communities rather than an isolated party of heroes.

The headquarters functions as the strategic center of the game. You recruit allies, meet leaders, unlock improvements, and make decisions through a technology tree that covers both field-level upgrades and broader research. Technologies can improve operations, strengthen the organization, or support the Raun and the surrounding ecosystem.

Resources are deliberately interconnected. Funds help sustain the organization, research opens new options, animals represent the conservation mission, and alliances can influence what your faction is able to accomplish. The result is a management loop where neglecting one area can weaken the others.

The narrative also gives importance to characters outside the active squad. Leaders, recruits, allies, and faction representatives contribute to the campaign’s conflicts, so progression is not limited to leveling the units currently deployed on a map.

Campaign structure and replay-oriented modes

The current Steam description identifies a 23-mission narrative campaign divided across escalating stages of the story. Missions combine field objectives, combat, headquarters management, and narrative consequences, so the campaign is not structured as a simple sequence of disconnected battles.

The campaign’s central loop is mastery through consequences. You recruit and train teams, choose where to spend resources, decide how to treat defeated enemies, and accept that one solution may create a different problem later. The game is better understood as a strategic narrative campaign than as a conventional linear RPG.

Developer updates also document a separate Survival Mode built around escalating danger and repeated encounters. It offers a different structure from the authored campaign, with more emphasis on endurance, enemy pressure, and score-oriented survival decisions.

Steam lists the game as single-player. There is no verified online co-op, competitive multiplayer campaign, or local split-screen mode attached to the current PC product.

What makes its Afrofuturist setting distinct

We Are The Caretakers places animal conservation at the center of its science-fiction conflict. The Raun are rhino-like creatures whose survival is tied to the fate of Shadra, while the Caretakers operate as a secretive protective force confronting both human and extraterrestrial threats.

The visual identity draws from Afrofuturist character and world design rather than copying familiar European medieval or space-opera conventions. The setting combines advanced technology, ecological stakes, faction politics, and a dark narrative about extinction, resistance, and the cost of protecting a vulnerable population.

That premise gives the game a clear thematic identity, but it also changes how players read its systems. Detaining a poacher, protecting a settlement, or investing in an animal-focused technology is not just a tactical action. Each decision expresses what kind of resistance you are building.

PC features, controls, and storefront details

The current PC storefront is Steam, where the game is sold as a paid single-player title. Steam lists Steam Achievements, Steam Trading Cards, Steam Cloud, statistics, leaderboards, and Family Sharing. A separate soundtrack is listed as additional paid content, while no large campaign expansion lineup is shown on the current store page.

The game supports both keyboard and mouse and controller input. Controller support covers the headquarters, RTS field, and turn-based encounter layers, although the interface contains enough management detail that many PC players may still prefer mouse-driven navigation.

No separate launcher is identified in the current Steam listing, and no dedicated anti-cheat system is listed. The game is fundamentally offline-oriented single-player strategy rather than a competitive service requiring anti-cheat infrastructure.

Steam lists full interface, audio, and subtitle support in English, French, German, Spanish from Spain, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Latin American Spanish, and Japanese. That makes the game more accessible to international PC players while keeping English as one of the fully supported audio languages.

For players using handheld PC hardware, developer updates document controller-focused interface work and Steam Deck playability. The game’s layered menus and compact text can still make screen size and input preference important practical considerations.

Who should play We Are The Caretakers?

We Are The Caretakers is a strong fit for players who enjoy party management, unusual science-fiction settings, tactical combat, moral trade-offs, and strategy games where reputation and resources matter as much as battlefield victories.

It is especially suitable for players who want a campaign built around protecting a species, organizing a resistance, and making decisions across several connected management systems. Fans of squad-focused games may appreciate the combination of roster building, faction politics, and real-time field deployment.

Players looking for fast action, multiplayer cooperation, a traditional open-world RPG, or a pure tile-based tactics game should set their expectations accordingly. The experience spends substantial time in menus, planning screens, narrative scenes, and strategic preparation between encounters.

Similar games on PC

Players who enjoy the roster pressure, attrition, and long-term consequences of punishing party-management RPGs such as Darkest Dungeon may find familiar strategic tension here, although We Are The Caretakers places greater emphasis on factions, conservation, and political reputation.

Its combination of headquarters preparation, defensive priorities, and turn-based battles also overlaps with survival-focused tactical strategy games like The Last Spell. The difference is structural: The Last Spell is built around fortress defense and nightly monster waves, while We Are The Caretakers spreads its pressure across field operations, diplomacy, research, and wildlife protection.

For a more narrative-driven comparison, choice-heavy tactical RPG journeys such as The Banner Saga provide a useful contrast. Both games connect combat with difficult decisions, but We Are The Caretakers uses a broader organizational layer instead of centering its campaign on a traveling caravan.

We Are The Caretakers FAQ

Has We Are The Caretakers been renamed on PC?

No verified rebrand has replaced the original title. Steam currently lists the game as We Are The Caretakers, and no separate definitive or renamed PC edition was confirmed during storefront research.

Is We Are The Caretakers single-player?

Yes. The current Steam listing identifies the PC version as single-player. There is no verified online co-op, local multiplayer, or split-screen campaign.

What is the main gameplay loop?

You recruit and train Caretakers, organize squads, expand the headquarters, research technologies, deploy teams onto real-time strategic maps, and resolve threats through turn-based encounters. Reputation, funds, animals, research, and alliances all influence the campaign.

Does the game include a Survival Mode?

Developer updates document Survival Mode as a separate replay-oriented option with escalating danger and repeated encounters. The current store description primarily highlights the 23-mission narrative campaign.

Does We Are The Caretakers support controllers on PC?

Yes. Controller support was added for the headquarters, RTS field, and turn-based encounter systems. Keyboard and mouse input are also supported.

What languages are available?

Steam lists English, French, German, Spanish from Spain, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Latin American Spanish, and Japanese with interface, full audio, and subtitle support.