Sheltered Review
By Lee Marcussen
Post Apocalyptic Micro-Management
Now as many of you know I’m a big fan of the Fallout series and I love the survival shows. I really liked the vault or fallout shelter living doomsday concepts. When I saw a trailer for Sheltered I was very interested. The survival concept was different than others and with a sort of 8 bit style I knew I wanted to give it a try. Sheltered starts out with you making your own family, in which you can fully customize everything on from the gender, skin color, hair color, clothing, personal traits, and the stats they have. The stats are listed as Intelligence, Charisma, Perception, Dexterity, and Strength or you can use a preset ranking of stats. These stats help you in game while in the shelter or while exploring the wasteland.
Your family consists of 2 adults and 2 children with a family pet. The family pets available are a snake, dog, cat, fish and a horse. Each pet has its own special ability that helps your family. After you have all of your family members picked out and customized you than are entered into the shelter. From there you now have control over everything your family does. You also take over any function one of the family members has to do. These functions cover everything from eating, sleeping, showing, using the toilet. Pretty much anything a normal human would have to do in a similar situation. A big aspect of the game is customizing your shelter to fit the needs of your family. Anything from adding rooms to building amenities for you family. These help keep your families moral up and helps them maintain a standard of living. Everything you build is built through the work bench which you can upgrade and create higher end items that help your family survive.
Your family consists of 2 adults and 2 children with a family pet. The family pets available are a snake, dog, cat, fish and a horse. Each pet has its own special ability that helps your family. After you have all of your family members picked out and customized you than are entered into the shelter. From there you now have control over everything your family does. You also take over any function one of the family members has to do. These functions cover everything from eating, sleeping, showing, using the toilet. Pretty much anything a normal human would have to do in a similar situation. A big aspect of the game is customizing your shelter to fit the needs of your family. Anything from adding rooms to building amenities for you family. These help keep your families moral up and helps them maintain a standard of living. Everything you build is built through the work bench which you can upgrade and create higher end items that help your family survive.
Through the game as you go you have many different options on how you want to run your shelter and how to treat your family. You can set on expeditions to the wasteland in search of more resources but you can run into others in the wasteland that maybe not so friendly or encounter feral animals that will attack. You also have the option of letting other survivors’ join you shelter. This can be a good or bad thing. They can be very helpful or they can be a psychopath and kill your shelter members. (I let a guy in the shelter and he killed my son!!!). So be careful on who you let in.
Now the gameplay is very easy and just command oriented. The amount of things that need to be done in the shelter is a bit overwhelming but once you get your family situated and get them on a cycle of commanding them to do different tasks at different times it gets easier. Setting up the expeditions is quite fun, and can reward your family with new resources. You pick two members to go out and based on the amount of water you have determines how far your wanderers can go. Encountering people in the wasteland is interesting to say the least. The encounters can range from fighting, trading or gaining a new recruit. When out in the wasteland you have to be conscious of what resources you need whether it be more food for you family or more materials to build things it’s important to keep track of what you need because the game doesn’t allow you to go back to look at materials needed for an item while you searching through a house.
Overall I really enjoyed Sheltered and it has many good features that support that enjoyment. When I started the game I thought it was very weird play because I haven’t really played many survival games like this. I really like the concept, it's something new and to my knowledge hasn’t really been done this way before, so it gets points for originality. I really like all the customization features from family members to how you want your sheltere set up. The combat is turn base which fits the game perfectly. The controls are easy and the having the option to fast forward time is great. The downside is that the expeditions, while fun, are not as in-depth as I’d like them to be. You have to rely on items to upgrade materials but yet some of the materials seem impossible to find. The crafting system can kind of be confusing but once fully upgraded there is a lot of items available to build. The whole not being able to bounce between the menus for gathering resources to your work bench is kind of frustrating because if you don’t remember you need a material for a certain item you’re trying to make you have to go back and grab it. All in all it’s a solid game for anyone who’s a fan of survival simulation games. This is a great pick up that's easy and doesn’t require a whole lot of attention if you’re just looking to play a game to take your mind away.
*Note: A copy of the game was provided for the purposes of the review
Now the gameplay is very easy and just command oriented. The amount of things that need to be done in the shelter is a bit overwhelming but once you get your family situated and get them on a cycle of commanding them to do different tasks at different times it gets easier. Setting up the expeditions is quite fun, and can reward your family with new resources. You pick two members to go out and based on the amount of water you have determines how far your wanderers can go. Encountering people in the wasteland is interesting to say the least. The encounters can range from fighting, trading or gaining a new recruit. When out in the wasteland you have to be conscious of what resources you need whether it be more food for you family or more materials to build things it’s important to keep track of what you need because the game doesn’t allow you to go back to look at materials needed for an item while you searching through a house.
Overall I really enjoyed Sheltered and it has many good features that support that enjoyment. When I started the game I thought it was very weird play because I haven’t really played many survival games like this. I really like the concept, it's something new and to my knowledge hasn’t really been done this way before, so it gets points for originality. I really like all the customization features from family members to how you want your sheltere set up. The combat is turn base which fits the game perfectly. The controls are easy and the having the option to fast forward time is great. The downside is that the expeditions, while fun, are not as in-depth as I’d like them to be. You have to rely on items to upgrade materials but yet some of the materials seem impossible to find. The crafting system can kind of be confusing but once fully upgraded there is a lot of items available to build. The whole not being able to bounce between the menus for gathering resources to your work bench is kind of frustrating because if you don’t remember you need a material for a certain item you’re trying to make you have to go back and grab it. All in all it’s a solid game for anyone who’s a fan of survival simulation games. This is a great pick up that's easy and doesn’t require a whole lot of attention if you’re just looking to play a game to take your mind away.
*Note: A copy of the game was provided for the purposes of the review
Final Score: 7/10
|
+Very unique concept
+Easy to play +Lots of customization |
-Expeditions are limited
-Resources are hard to come by (Realistic but makes some upgrades seem impossible ) |
Release Date: 3/15/2016
Developer: Unicube & Team17 Digital Ltd
Publisher: Team17 Digital Ltd.
Developer: Unicube & Team17 Digital Ltd
Publisher: Team17 Digital Ltd.