Family Comes First.
The world has been destroyed by a nuclear war. Scorched wasteland as far as the eye can see. How will you survive? What will you eat? Where will you stay to shelter yourself from the elements?Fortunately, a family of four (five if they have a pet) finds a fallout shelter, which will now be their new home. How long will they last?
That's entirely up to you.
Sheltered is a Management Game by Unicube that sees you helping said family survive for as long as they can in a post-apocalyptic Earth. You must direct them to maintain and improve the shelter's systems and keep them stocked with food, medicine, and various other supplies.
The game was funded on Kickstarter, and released on March 15th, 2016.
Sheltered contains examples of:
- After the End: The world was destroyed by a nuclear war.
- Apocalyptic Log: There's a journal next to the radio which has a new page for every day, talking about said day's events. It updates automatically until the last family member dies.
- Bag of Holding: The Rucksack has eight slots for holding items. The Super Rucksack increases the number of slots by twelve.
- Bag of Sharing: If you sent two people on an expedition, they share the same inventory.
- Beneath the Earth: The fallout shelter the family's in is located just beneath the surface.
- Character Customization: You can change the appearance, names, and even personality traits of your chosen family.
- Disaster Scavengers: You have to send family members out into the world to look for food, medicine, and various other things they need to survive.
- Dowsing Device: While not magical, equipping your expedition party with the lock pick set and the metal detectors will help you find more and rarer items like guns, ammo, medicine, and even blueprints for crafting special items.
- Encounter Bait: Taking the tracker with you on an expedition makes it more common to encounter other survivors.
- Encounter Repellant: The purpose of the camouflage is to avoid encountering other survivors.
- Endless Game: There's no way to "win". Play continues until your shelter inhabitants are all dead.
- Equipment Upgrade: All systems are able to be upgraded once you have the materials necessary.
- Everything's Worse with Bears: One of the enemies you face in the game is a bear. It will easily kill a survivor if you're not careful.
- False Friend: Just because someone is helpful when they're in the shelter doesn't mean that they will continue to be. Survivors that you let in could attack you outright, or hang around gaining trust and helping out only to run off with some food or water in the night.
- Hazmat Suit: It's best recommended you have family members put these on when you have them go outside the shelter.
- Human Resources: If anyone dies in your shelter, you have the option to harvest their meat as long as you have a freezer.
- I'm a Humanitarian: You're bound to run into a cannibal while out in the wasteland. Similarly, you can harvest the meat from anyone who happens to die or get killed while in the shelter.
- Item Crafting: You can use your workbench to craft new items, such as toilets and beds. The more you upgrade your workbench, more items become available for crafting and the quality improves.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up / Not Allowed to Grow Old: No matter how long you play, none of the characters age up.
- Nuclear Family: No pun intended. You have two adults, and two kids. Maybe a pet as well.
- Post-Apocalyptic Dog: One of the pets you can decide to give the family. They can be helpful for defending the shelter from invaders, and helpful when exploring the wasteland, but they have to eat every day, which cuts into your meager supplies.
- Post-Apocalyptic Gas Mask: One of the ways your family can protect themselves from the nuclear radiation outside.
- Resources Management Gameplay: The core of the gameplay loop. You need food and water at minimum to survive. You also need to find materials to build important items, such as beds (for sleeping), showers (for cleaning yourself), toilets (for the obvious), and more. The generator to power the lights also requires gasoline. The shelter starts with enough materials for basic survival, but to get anything better, you'll need to scavenge the wasteland, which requires that your scavengers bring already-precious water and risk their health. Upgrading your facilities means that you'll be able to stretch resources further, such as the improved shower taking less water than the basic shower, or a comfortable bed filling up the energy meter faster than a sleeping bag on the floor.
- Robbing the Dead: If you kill someone while on an expedition, you can loot the body for anything they were carrying.
- Turn-Based Combat: The battles play out like this.
- Scavenger World: While you start with the basics needed, you will quickly run out the essentials and have to send your survivors into the wild to find more.
- Urban Ruins: The cities are shown to have fallen into disrepair.
