Sheltered, survive the apocalypse in this disaster management game on SteamOS & Linux

I've been meaning to try out Sheltered for a while, and this Sunday I decided to sit down and give it a go. I’m finding it to be quite a bit like This War of Mine, and it’s just as interesting. The game is currently in Early Access, but I’ve seen people already put tons and tons of hours into it.

About the game
Sheltered is a post-apocalyptic disaster management game that gives a whole new meaning to the term “nuclear family”. Given a head-start over the billions lost in a nuclear holocaust, you must gather as many supplies as possible en route to the concrete underground shelter that will soon become your family home for the foreseeable dreary future.

My initial thoughts
I like the options available to you at the start, such as picking your family stats, your pet, naming each character and choosing their traits. I didn’t mess around too much, so I pretty much kept it at the defaults it offered to me as they seemed okay. I kept my people as “well rounded”, in the hopes that they won’t be too annoying to manage for my first time playing it. I decided to have a cat as my pet, and name it Samsai. I hope my cat doesn't die, although it doesn't really do all that much.

The characters are all low resolution, and pixelated, but it’s done in quite a nice way. I imagine it will still turn some people off though.

It doesn’t try to be as serious as This War of Mine which is nice, and it has a different setting (post apocalypse rather than a war-torn city). It has a journal which fills up each time something happens, so it does try to give you a sense of feeling for the people you’re watching over.

It’s quite a slow game when you first get into it, and it can be a bit confusing. The tutorial is reasonably okay, but it does still leave you mostly on your own. It’s not overwhelming though, as there’s hardly any learning curve to it. Once you have the basics down it’s not all that hard to do anything. The main thing you need to worry about is getting enough supplies to build everything you need, and maintain your current systems.

The starting size of the shelter is a little on the annoying side, there’s very little space available to you. I would highly suggest going on as many search missions as you can, as quickly as you can to upgrade your workbench and make your shelter bigger. You’re going to need that space pretty quickly, especially if/when you accept more survivors.

You can build up your shelter with toilets, showers, beds and more. You also need to maintain your power, water and oxygen supplies as they can run out and break over time. Currently it doesn’t seem like it’s all that hard to keep things in working order, but I haven’t been in the game too long yet. I imagine it will get harder as the days progress, and I’ve already gone through quite a bit of the petrol for my power—uh oh.

What is useful, is being able to set each person to automatically fulfill their daily needs. This removes some of the micro-management, while letting you keep your mind focused on sorting your shelter out.

What I do find somewhat amusing, is that I can send my kids out on search missions. It doesn’t seem very wise, but I did it anyway!

Issues
It could use some more ambient sounds, as the game currently feels rather lonely most of the time.

I like what they have to come on their roadmap, and it sounds like it’s going to get pretty exciting, so I will be keeping an eye on this one as it goes through development!

Final thoughts: Overall I think it’s pretty neat, and I can certainly see myself sinking many more hours into the game. It would be nice to have more difficulty options, more sounds and rebindable keys. If you like survival management games, be sure to take a look. The Linux version is pretty polished, and it worked fine right away even on my multiple monitor setup.

Remember though, it’s in Early Access.

Check out Sheltered on Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.