It was just two weeks ago (I think) that Sheltered was part of Epic’s weekly free game giveaway on the Epic Games Store. I think it was a little more than obvious that I wasn’t enthralled by it as a game, being focused around survival and having a heavy pixel-art style. I am the man that has said if I ever have to craft another axe in my life, I’ll kill someone. I don’t think it will surprise anyone if I said that my opinion has not changed on that matter since then. I could better spend my time playing sports or doing something equally not me.

So when it came to Sheltered 2 it was not going to be given what people seem to believe is an “unbiased” review. I could do a whole editorial on how we’re all biased, and it is those biases that create a review filtered through some thought greater than some gibberish scrawled across Steam pages. Then again, sometimes that thought is articulated by a complete moron, and that brings us back to me. I wasn’t entirely enjoying Sheltered 2 to any great degree, but I also wasn’t looking to put it down as quickly as I do some other games.

Sheltered 2 continues that theme from the previous game of the world being destroyed by a series of nuclear attacks on a nondescript place. You are in control of a small collective of survivors who set out to live underground in a shelter and be self-sustaining. Through this, you’ll manage resources, craft items, and swear when it all goes to pot 16-days into the experiment of someone stupid playing god. Sheltered 2 is unforgiving, in all the ways the survivalist nuts that play games enjoy so much. I see you, I also enjoy Frostpunk, but I do not understand you.

This is actually one of the few bits that kept me going in the beginning, the constant demand to do something. You begin with things like crafting a planter, repairing an air filter, fuelling the generator, and keeping everyone fed and sleeping well. The reason this is what kept my interest was just the simple fact that nothing was going on. I hate to say it, but I was bored for those first few hours and that may be the aforementioned displeasure for crafting everything that breaks after two hits and surviving dysentery up to the ceiling. Every one of your people are so needy, I don’t know how parents put up with children. I thought I was playing The Sims for a minute. Let’s go poo, let’s eat, come on, let’s sleep.

Once you are able to balance the schedule of keeping your people fed without vomiting all over the place and sleeping well, you can go on expeditions for resources and components. This builds in an enjoyable layer of danger that sitting at home playing a mix of Sim Tower and The Sims doesn’t. You have to scavenge and fight off other survivors. However, I went in the way I do with all games with a suggestion of moral complexity: I went the Star Fleet route, trying to play the pacifist or as close as I can. No, that isn’t what Sheltered 2 cares for. You do considerably better being a horrible person. I allowed a man into my group and watched him slowly die so we could eat meat.

This was after the rabbits stopped coming around my little garden area and I was running low on vegetables for any real meal. You might complain, “doesn’t that make them depressed?” Yes, but when you are malnourished and everyone is dying anyway, I don’t think you are going to care where the rationed food is coming from. That was a decision I made based on one fact: After you’ve accepted someone into your ranks, you are stuck with them. You can’t kick them for love nor money. Yes, you are warned if your systems can’t handle that number of people. However, the trouble is you can’t tell if you’ll be able to upgrade systems fast enough without prior knowledge of the components required and what you have in storage.

While I am on complaints, the map for expeditions and options are somewhat lacking. Specifically, I’m talking about the edge-scrolling for the expedition map, “edge-scrolling” is the term I’d search for in the options. Instead, the phrasing used is “normal” and “alternative” in relation to “camera movement,” which after many hours was annoying to realize. I’d have taken an option labeled “camera movement” anywhere as inverted in some way, not something to do with edge-scrolling. That was a mild inconvenience.

Performance actually isn’t as bad in-game when you’re playing. However, for some odd reason, I had the main menu chugging along “smooth” at maybe 20 frames-per-second. That and loading are the only times the game runs horribly, but once you are in-game, even some old hardware can run it well. I had actually taken to reading a couple of chapters of books while the game loaded, given on some hardware it was taking 20-ish minutes to load up. It is an odd instance of performance tainting opinions, but one that may be worth noting nonetheless. As I say, once you are in-game even with hardware that may not hit all the minimum requirements listed, you can have reasonable performance though at the lowest settings.

In the end, I had to ask myself why I was playing Sheltered 2 because I wasn’t having too much fun. Once I turned mentally ill and started carving up my bunker mates, I was having more fun though not enough to keep me going for hours on end. Ultimately I realized why Sheltered 2 felt like a comfy place, it is a late 90s to the mid-00s game in several ways. The roughness around the edges makes it a little charming, but the complete lack of excitement made it quite dry as an experience. Until combat started kicking in and I decided to not bother with the factions being friendly at all, I was just plodding along with managing resources and being bored to death.

By far, it is not the great experience some might be hoping for, as combat feels stagnant with very little to it. There are a large amount of crafting and resource-management aspects, but personally, I’m on the side of “seen one, seen ’em all!” My point is, there is nothing special about Sheltered 2 unless you wanted a non-stylized version of Fallout Shelter with some actual gameplay instead of microtransactions. I never had a moment of feeling underpowered or overbearing on the world. Maybe that balance is there to make the game longer, but I ended up bored more often than not. I like the idea though, in execution, it came out to be little more than a fine, solid mid-00s management game.

A PC copy of Sheltered 2 was provided by Team17 for the purposes of this review.

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Sheltered 2

$19.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Great resource management.
• Enough room to take dark turns when you want to.

Cons

• Very little forcing you into difficult situations.
• Options that are lacking clarity.
• A very slow burn.