Sheltered

If you enjoyed last year’s iOS/Android sleeper Fallout Shelter, but wanted more complexity, less predictable combat and a greater sense of achievement even in abject failure, look no further.

Sheltered is a well crafted game that is quite tough at first to make progress in, but once you’re used to its systems there can be a rewarding experience.

Sheltered's survival of the fittest foundation makes it repetitive by nature, but the ability to customise your family and choose a pet makes starting each new game charming, rather than chore-like. [May 2016, p.92]

Sheltered depicts the grim, unpleasant side of the post-apocalypse to great effect for its limited resources. That doesn’t stop the game from getting frustratingly repetitive though as there’s simply not enough variety in the game’s opening hours.

Ultimately, we found Sheltered to be engaging, purely due to its brutal difficulty. It’s quite a shame then that its brand of survival is far too often mundane. [May 2016, p74]

Sheltered starts off brilliantly, hooking you with the immediate and pressing needs of a family seeking sanctuary against the perils of its post-apocalyptic world, but there is not enough content to reward prolonged play. Once your vault has been fully upgraded, the experience becomes bland and meaningless, veering dangerously close to authenticity of the undesirable sort.

Overall, Shelter is an indie game that accomplishes most of what it sets out to do but is ultimately not really meant for a console release. The controls just aren’t meant for this kind of game and coupled with just how difficult it really is, it really took away from a lot of the enjoyment I could have garnered from it.

The game has a nice premises, but lacks on the execution, as it feels very repetitive, and building up your base is more a pain of managing your inventory than it is to actually enjoying it. After just a few tries it will feel very repetitive and rng based (which isn't always a bad thing, but in this game it is)