Sheltered: Early version preview

There were five of them: dad, mom, son, daughter and dog. By some miracle, having avoided radiation, brutalized people and sandstorms, they managed to find shelter in the radioactive desert in case of nuclear war. It was old and shabby, so the family had a lot of work to do. But everyone believed that they could handle it. The mother was the first to disappear: she simply did not return from another outing.

Shortly after that, some crazy guy killed his father. The children had to open the door to a woman named Donna who happened to be passing by so that she could help them take care of the house. Then they let in more people on the condition that they explore the surroundings. People explored, brought food and died from radiation. The guys, hardened by the death of their parents, took it calmly, but Donna, having eaten the third deceased, finally went crazy. The next day, due to an oversight, the air filter turned off, and everyone was irradiated. There was no medicine for animals – the dog died. Brother and sister couldn’t stand it anymore. The shelter remained closed from the inside forever.

This is how I spent this summer

IN The Sims you need to take several people and arrange their life: find work according to their talents, improve living conditions, fight off minor everyday troubles. If we take the same concept, but set it in a post-nuclear war world, the story becomes somewhat more dramatic. This is what is dedicated to Sheltered.

A family ends up in a shelter, whose well-being must be carefully monitored. And, if possible, improve living conditions: expand the premises, invite new people and organize a commune, explore the territory within a radius of several kilometers. The prospects are bright, but almost unattainable – the game is constantly trying to make you feel very bad.

Everyone living in a shelter has a huge number of needs: everyone needs food, sleep, shower and entertainment. At first, you won’t have enough materials even for a normal toilet. To hell with them: there is so little space inside that there is physically nowhere to fit two sleeping bags – you need to make a schedule and put all four of them in turn until you dig new rooms.

The bomb shelter requires constant maintenance: cleaning filters, fuel for the generator, repairing equipment. If you don’t keep everything under control, it will fall apart at the most inopportune moment, leaving you without water or slowly filling the room with radioactive dust.

Tanks for storing rain residue are minimal, https://plazaplaycasino.co.uk/login/ and if new ones are not built quickly, the first prolonged drought will make everyone suffer. And no one has come up with a “food generator” yet, so you’ll have to go outside for supplies. After looking at the characteristics of the residents, you need to choose the fastest and most observant ones to go to the nearest village.

While father dances with the dog on the top floor, mother digs a new room. There’s something feminist about this.

For this purpose, an expedition is set up: a route is drawn on the map, the necessary supply of water is allocated (without rain you risk ending up at home), and part of the family goes into the unknown. She makes herself known only in emergency situations, communicating by radio; the player can be transported there to personally control the events.

Several villages are always nearby: there you can find the most basic things for survival. Some plastic to make protective respirators – if left without them, you won’t be able to leave the shelter without risking getting sick. Wood, cement, metal – the basis for expansion and construction. If you’re lucky, then some light bulbs, wires, microcircuits so that you can upgrade the shelter systems.

The game relies on an easy-to-use "crafting" system. All the structures needed in everyday life are assembled from about sixty components, which become more efficient and technologically advanced over time. Some “clunkiness” of the interface forces the player to quickly remember almost all the necessary components and keep in mind their quantity in order to know what kind of junk to drag out of the city this time.

But no one guarantees that you will be able to get anything at all: people are constantly walking on the surface, whose behavior is impossible to predict. Many people want to join, but can you really afford it with your only sleeping bag?? Someone will offer to trade, and this is the best case scenario. After all, they can attack, and then you will have to engage in turn-based combat.

Nuclear winter, spring, summer… and winter again

On the third or fourth attempt I finally manage to keep everything under control. People stop dying from hunger, dirt or devastation, life stabilizes a little, and even immodest requests begin to appear: I want more light bulbs, a more technologically advanced workbench. Maybe even fix the car standing at the top!

But stability in the game is illusory: the further you move from home, the harsher the wasteland becomes. If your reconnaissance squad finds a city and runs into a gang of psychopaths there, they may die. Mom and daughter will be left at home alone, with frayed nerves and, perhaps, without respirators to go outside. You’ll have to wait for the rare traders who sometimes wander into the iron doors. Or other unfortunates who want to join.

It is likely that under your leadership several generations will change living in the shelter. Someone will die from radiation and be eaten, someone will die on the way if they get into a fight. It is almost impossible to win fights: they are made primitively and extremely inconvenient.

The combat system from a JRPG is limited to the choice of one button, which you have to poke thirty times. In addition, there are a couple of obvious design flaws here: fighting is always unprofitable and terribly annoying, but if you don’t do it regularly, you instantly fall behind your opponents in level and are guaranteed to die. Therefore, weapons in the game completely lose their function and remain only a valuable “currency” for merchants.

There are other shortcomings in the game. Thus, the number of random events is limited to only three types of meetings with people. The shelter also rarely throws up tricks: unless someone gets food poisoning, but this just means that you have to work harder with a mop. Same The Sims is maintained largely due to unsettling accidents: it is clear that Sheltered wants the same, but for now she devotes herself more to management.

“For now” because the game just recently appeared in Early Access. At the time of writing this text, they are just beginning to correct the fundamental balance of objects (so far the rarest and most needed find is plastic, the description of which says: “Lying around in every home”).

In addition, the system of needs is lame. The stress level only jumps when someone dies, and the characters endure the absence of a shower without any consequences at all, despite the “urgent need”. Hunger and dehydration also do not reduce the number of lives, and in order to build one room, the hero must spend twice as long without sleep as expected. And nothing, he copes.

However, it’s easy to forgive all the little things and broken mechanisms in the game, because the release of an early version implies all this. But even despite the disaster that is called the combat system here, despite the crooked “randomizer”, Sheltered incredibly addictive.

The vector that the developers are following is clearly emerging now, and it works even in its completely raw form. If, by the time they leave EA, the authors can achieve internal diversity, like great “managers” like Theme Hospital, then you can spend a good hundred hours playing a simulator of a “typical American family in atypical conditions”.