Fallout Shelter Game Review (Android)

Released 

June 14th 2015 (IOS)

August 13th 2015 (Android)

Price 

Free (Microtransactions included)

For the Fallout series, the excitement has never been higher in 2015; with the announcement of the long awaited Fallout 4, Bethesda Game Studios brought their fans together in a frenzy of anticipation. To fill in the wait until November, Bethesda announced the first Fallout title for mobile, Shelter. It’s a competent game that captures the essence of the franchise very well, but it doesn’t quite manage to rise above the simplistic traits of recent mobile games.

In Fallout Shelter, you are the Overseer of a Vault-Tec fallout shelter and it’s your job to keep your dwellers both happy and healthy; to do this you’ll need to manage three main resources; power, food and water which are produced through assigning dwellers to several different jobs in specific rooms which are built over the course of the game. Over time your vault will expand and as your dweller count grows more rooms will be unlocked, including ones which train SPECIAL stats for each dweller. This will call for a greater amount of bottle caps to afford both new rooms and their respective upgrades. The ant farm style of the vault is heavily reminiscent of games like XCOM and FTL and it also utilises the mechanic of combining rooms to yield larger amounts of resources. You’ll also have to protect your dwellers from several threats, from simple fires to powerful Deathclaws; these can occur either randomly or by failing a room rush which is dependent on percentages. This can be one of the more frustrating aspects of the game as percentages can be heavily misleading; you may rush a room at 15% only to trigger an incident that ends up killing off half of your population. The calculation of odds for rush success could have been better balanced to avoid these irritating moments. The player is graded on their performance based on overall dweller happiness with 94% or higher giving the player 140 caps per day. Rounding off the package is the ability to send your dwellers out into the wasteland to scavenge for loot and the lunchbox system. The Vault-Tec lunchboxes can give you rare items and can be attained through completing certain tasks or by paying real money. It’s satisfying to open these up and savour the fine bits of loot you can uncover. Equipping dwellers with stronger weapons, special outfits or upping their SPECIAL stats makes them more likely to survive through incidents and out in the wasteland and you’ll be moving them around constantly over the course of the game with a swipe of a finger.

All the ingredients of a great Fallout mobile title are accounted for, but the game is lacking when it comes to long-term engagement. The biggest issue I have with Fallout Shelter is that once you’ve reached the dweller cap of 200, there’s nothing left to do. Some players may be interested in obtaining all the rare weapons, outfits and special dwellers, but otherwise you won’t find much to stick around for. Even the deathclaw attacks become relatively easy with a strong weapon set and well stocked supply of stimpaks. In terms of design, Fallout Shelter does feel like a missed opportunity in many ways; there are no specific upgrades that make rooms better or worse than any other and many of the facets of the vaults in the franchise have been omitted completely. Where are the cloning labs? The robot repair centres or an overseer’s office? Why is there no variation in vault locations besides a simple mountain? It makes the photo option a bit pointless if there’s very little to customise in the player’s personal vault. If Bethesda really wanted to push the boat out with Fallout Shelter, they could have given players the freedom to do what they want with the Vault they created. Other building sims like Jurassic Park Operation Genesis (It’s fairly old but still awesome!) allowed players to just break down the security fences and let the dinosaurs go on a rampage; the same mindset could be applied to Fallout Shelter with Vault-Tec’s sinister experiments that are a common fixture in the series.

That’s not to say that it’s all bad; the core interface is very user friendly and accessible despite some issues which I’ll talk about in a bit and if there’s one thing that I can really praise Fallout Shelter for, it’s the good attitude it shows towards mobile business practices. When the game uses timers, it does so in a sensible way when dwellers are training their SPECIAL stats. There are no virtual currencies locked behind paywalls to speed up progress and the microtransactions for lunch boxes can be completely ignored as one lunchbox is dished out per week alongside completing tasks. It doesn’t halt or disrespect the player by asking them to pay real money, nor does it demand a constant internet connection and that is an encouraging change from other popular mobile titles.

The Fallout series has been known for its deep and endlessly replayable role playing mechanics, but for its debut on the mobile platform, Shelter doesn’t make much of an impact, opting to go down the simplistic route instead of working towards engaging long term fans of the series. Fallout Shelter had an opportunity to bring new gameplay mechanics to the common base management formula, but ultimately there really isn’t that much to it. Most of the time you’ll just be tapping on the screen to collect resources, check up on your dwellers and rush rooms. It’s a bit of a wasted opportunity when you have vault incidents and all you have to do is move a few denizens to the right room at the right time. It would have been far more engaging to have a series of small mini-games that tie in with the role-playing the series is known for. For example, what if a targeting game with VATS (Vault-Tec-Assisted-Targeting-System) took place in a raider or deathclaw attack? The game doesn’t really have too much in the way of progression either; aside from upgrading rooms it doesn’t feel like your vault is really growing or changing in any way besides statistics which caused a fair bit of disconnect with me.

The controls could also use a bit of tuning up as well; for the most part, they’re really simple and accessible, but there will often be times where you’ll try to tap on a room, only to move deeper your view into the vault. Or when you attempt to select a dweller to issue a stimpak but instead you click on a different room; this can be fairly annoying when you’re in the middle of an incident and are trying to keep your dwellers from dying at the hands of Deathclaws and Raiders. Fallout Shelter’s mostly shallow mechanics may succeed at bringing in the casual crowd, but for long term fans of the series it’s fairly disappointing that Bethesda didn’t go the extra mile, even with app updates adding a new mechanic or two to the game.

While the core gameplay of Fallout Shelter does falter, its presentation is as effective and engaging as mobile games come. The art style is really charming to look at, nailing the futuristic fifties setting of the franchise, the small sprites of Vault dwellers, enemies and the way the different rooms operate all feature some nice looking animations. There’s also some rather humorous quips from the game’s writing from the conversations the dwellers have to the diaries written by any would be wanderers you send to explore the wastes. A simple arrangement of low-key jazz tunes strikes a light-hearted tone, while the sounds of the rooms working away add a touch of productivity to the proceedings. Fallout Shelter may or may not have a few winks and nods to the upcoming Fallout 4 as well; something which began with the addition of Piper, a character from the new game’s Boston setting. Even if you aren’t fully engaged as a player with Fallout Shelter, you’ll definitely appreciate the effort that went into the visuals and art style.

Fallout Shelter makes a welcome change from other mobile titles by removing several egregious trends that have held the format back; but with that said it still comes off as rather basic and bare-bones. It’s enough to stave the wait for Fallout 4, but it isn’t something that will keep you engaged forever.

Rating: 6.5/10