Sheltered
OpenCritic Rating
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Sheltered
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. Just be prepared to lose people along the way.
Despite any faults listed above, don’t get the wrong impression: Sheltered is a fun and challenging game, especially if you’re willing to put a lot of time into the game crafting the best shelter possible.
If you like Fallout Shelter and you want something with a few less smiles and a few more painful deaths, Sheltered will tickle that morbid itch. Managing its multitude of interconnected systems requires a deft touch, and while its difficulty isn't for the faint of heart, there's a real sense of accomplishment in keeping your growing troupe of survivors alive for days on end. While not as effective as other forays into the well-trodden post-apocalypse, as well as being a victim of its own procedural generation at times, there's still a morbid curiosity to its pixel art survivalism.
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.
Sheltered is a complex strategy and resource management game which gets a lot of things right. Its presentation creates a palpable atmosphere, while its many relatively simple systems interlock in ways that are both thematically appropriate and mechanically interesting. Unfortunately, those same clever systems sometimes rely too heavily on luck, which – when combined with the title's abysmal controls – often make the entire experience more frustrating than its worth.
Overall, Shelter is an indie game that accomplishes most of what it sets out to do
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's 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.
