Sheltered Reviews
Nuclear family.
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.
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.
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 pits the player in a post-apocalyptic setting and there are plenty of options on how to deal with those horrible, new circumstances. Unfortunately the game is not very user-friendly and a lot of the game's mechanics and actions often go unexplained when some simple tutorials could make a big difference. The game is also difficult to interact with, which does not make the experience more enjoyable.
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Hardcore survivalists might find something enjoyable in Sheltered, but the game is too slow and far too boring to get fully invested.
Bleak, brutal and exhilarating
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.
Despite average graphics and audio, ‘Sheltered' really drew me in and I couldn't put it down.
An extremely addictive and fun life-simulation strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic world. Sheltered offers a well balanced implementation of the most necessary micromanagement requirements. Beautiful pixel art, music, and sounds bring the shelter and each character alive with retro flare. All that feels missing is the addition of more craftable items, a larger map to explore, and expanded dialogue scenarios. A solid 8/10 for Unicube's first video game.
Sheltered is like a premium version of Fallout Shelter, and it's a far more thematically compelling proposition. I love that it makes you be quite ruthless in your efforts to keep your family alive, but then allows you to feel awful when they die. It's less humanising than The War of Mine, which is the most readily comparable game out there at the moment, but it's intense for its own, valuable, reasons.
I had a lot of fun with Sheltered. Its micromanagement system and post-apocalyptic setting were very appealing and made this a great survival game. There’s plenty to do in this one, and you’ll end up having to do several runs to survive long enough for you to get all trophies in the game, so it definitely has a lot of replay value. I hope my Sheltered review has shown you if this is the type of game for you to add to your PlayStation 4 collection!
Sheltered makes for an engaging time killer in short bursts, but very few of its survival themed mechanics serve in benefit to the overall experience. Where Scenario actually makes good use of the premise, Survive suffers considerably due to poor RNG, a tedious loop, and a difficulty curve that, while adjustable, does very little to accommodate newcomers. There is an admittedly strong thematic cohesion between the gameplay and atmosphere, but this doesn't do nearly enough to do its premise justice.
More than just a case of survival, Sheltered pushes you to grow and eventually thrive, and the moment your little unit starts to become somewhat self-sufficient, you’ll feel a real swell of pride
I’ll conclude by saying that Sheltered gets a lot of things right with creating a complex system that provides a realistic and interesting take on surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s just unfortunate that to succeed you have to rely more on luck than skill and is further let down by awkward and frustrating controls and a lack of narrative and minimal presentation. If you fancy a much more challenging Fallout: Shelter and aren’t scared by an intense resource management system then Sheltered is a fine survival strategy game to sink many hours into.
There isn't much going on in Sheltered, but as a post-apocalyptic survival sim there wasn't going to be much beyond the baron wasteland. Decision making and difficulty are the major factors that will keep you interest, although some players may feel put-off by these elements.
An understated and fun little survival simulator that is mostly well-balanced, and a small treat to play.