Sheltered Review. Life after the Apocalypse

Are you a fan of survival games? If so, then you’ll be so excited to give Sheltered a spin. The story revolves around some people who are trying to survive in a world after nuclear destruction.

Graphics: 4.0

I’m not a fan of pixelated art styles, but it somehow works here. The graphics can make it easy for you to ignore some of the faults of the title. The game uses a gorgeously plain graphical style which is further complemented by smart sound design and a subtle soundtrack. In fact, this attribute makes it easy for you to focus on the intensity of the situations and drama.

Gameplay: 4.5

You begin by designing a pet and four people. With the four, you can create a great combination that would be your family. Your group can be based on the clothing styles, skin color, and facial features. With this level of customization, you can invest in your starting family and keep them alive throughout the game.  

You will also require several things as your family members live their lives. Water, air, food, and sleep are just some of these things that you’ll need to be concerned about. So you’ll be tasked with maintaining the supply in your shelter.

In Sheltered, you’ll get to meet other survivors who may either be friendly or see your family as easy targets. Combat here is turn-based, which works pretty well. You can recruit the friendlier folks to maintain your bunker. The gameplay makes it feel like you’re in a post-apocalyptic world trying to survive and you’ll be tasked to do anything to stay alive.

Controls: 3.0

Easily, the feature that comes out as the most disappointing in the strategic sojourn has everything to do with the game controls, and not in any way associated with the moment-to-moment game mechanics. Simply put, the title was obviously designed to work with the keyboard and a mouse effectively. The icons are irritatingly small, there’s a constant need to move the cursor on-screen, and there’s a lot of minute decision. This means that the whole affair can be a frustration.

Replay Value: 4.5

From what it looks, the developers did pay much attention to how they could enhance the game’s replay value. It’s generally fair, and most of the features offered will keep you coming back for more. One of these features are the expeditions and instances where the crew that you’ve sent out frequently radios back to inquire about some aspects of the journeys. Your responses greatly affect the expedition’s outcome while increasing the replay value of the game tenfold.

Conclusion

Sheltered is a sophisticated resource management and strategy game whose developers got lots of things right. The representation brings about a palpable atmosphere, and its numerous relatively simple systems seem to interlock in both mechanically exciting and thematically appropriate ways. Unfortunately, the same set of brilliant systems heavily relies on luck which makes the whole experience quite frustrating compared to its worth if combined with the abysmal controls.