At E3, a mobile application was announced, at that time only for iOS, called Fallout Shelter, I as the owner of the platform Android drooled over the various reviews. Fallout Shelter online and finally waited for the release of this mini-game under Android. And now I’ve been playing this game for several days and let me tell you what it is Fallout Shelter and what it is eaten with.

Don’t blame me too much for mistakes, I work without a full-time proofreader for my beloved wife =)

Review of the game Fallout Shelter

And so, I believe that the game can be described in one word “anthill”, as my wife aptly described the game. In fact, you take on the responsibilities of a shelter caretaker, at the beginning of the game you choose a number for your shelter and begin to manage it, that is Fallout Shelter is a simulation of a shelter after a nuclear disaster.

And so you have the power of a caretaker, you are in charge of the caps, and now the first settlers have arrived and you need to build individual elements of the underground bunker and manage resources of which there are 3 types in the game:

1. Food— it is produced in premises marked with forks;
2. Electricity— the premises are marked with lightning;
3. Water— naturally, purified water is needed for normal life;

Premises need to be created to maintain the delicate balance of these resources, otherwise you may, for example, be left without electricity. In addition, you need to create rooms for the staff to rest; if you place a couple of men + women there and leave them for some time, they will soon hide in the room, and a satisfied settler and a pregnant “settler” will come out of there; pregnancy lasts about 3 standard hours.

Settlers should be distributed among rooms according to their abilities S-P-E-C-I-A-L, this will speed up resource production. Bonuses to characteristics are given by different suits, lab coats, and armor.

The lazy ones or the bravest ones can be given weapons in their hands and sent to the wasteland, where they get caps, various armor and clothes and weapons. Weapons are needed to fight off radioactive cockroaches and against enemies from the wasteland.

To speed up development, you can use lunchboxes, you can get them by completing some task, or buy them for real money, of course. Fallout Shelter It was released more as a companion app than as a standalone piece, but it's worth noting that the companion product turned out to be surprisingly successful.

And finally, I would like to say about the RUSH mode for buildings, by clicking on it you see the percentage, this is the percentage of successful execution of the RUSH function, what it gives when you click on Activate if the process was successful (for example, calculate for yourself at 30% in which cases you will succeed, and in which ones not) you will receive caps and resources instantly, but if not successfully, then you will either get a fire or radioactive cockroaches in this room. Well, the percentage will increase. But in general, Fallout Shelter I would like to advise you how to take a break from completing Fallout 3, play, relax and go back into battle!

Along with the release of the long-awaited fourth Fallout, the developer company released a simulator of a post-nuclear shelter in Fallout Shelter for portable devices. For some time, the toy was an exclusive highlight for technology running the Apple platform, where in just a couple of weeks the project enriched the developers by five million North American dollars. From now on, owners of Android devices can also build shelters with their own hands and save people from certain death.

First, you need to download the fallout shelter game for Android, build a reliable shelter, settle colonists in it, increase their number, strengthen protection from dangerous monsters, track the levels of intra-group well-being and many other parameters. The game is mostly free, but it is possible to purchase in-game currency to speed up and facilitate the process.

Send your pumped-up Residents with powerful armor and guns to discover the world. The more time they spend in the radioactive desert, the better prey they carry, although this is associated with a higher danger. At the initial stages, it is irrational to send people on missions lasting more than a few dozen, especially if you do not have stimpacks and anti-radiation drugs. Remember that you will have to lead them home - and they must get there at least alive, so that you can drag in the loot, and not the corpses. So don't go on too risky missions at first.

Complete missions to get caps and lunch boxes

You can get free Caps and especially LunchBoxes from completing various tasks, so keep checking and try to complete tasks as quickly as possible. Do not try to open the boxes immediately after receiving them; it is best to do this when you are running low on resources, since there is a high probability of dropping a set of critically needed resources.

How to engage in population reproduction?

To begin the delicate process of childbirth, there must be at least one male and one female person in the living quarters. The more charisma a couple has, the better, but do not forget to check that the level is approximately the same; it is unreasonable to place together one hero with five charisma, and another with a measly one. After some time, relaxing in the living quarters, the partners will begin to engage in a process that is natural for people, and the woman will become pregnant. This is a sign that after a while the air of the shelter will be stirred by the cry of a new child. In real time, before the birth of a child, you have to wait not nine months, but about a couple of hours.

How to organize protection against Raiders?

Raider attacks take place on a random basis, but it is quite possible to repel them by equipping a couple of inhabitants with the coolest weapons and sending them into the room with the Vault Door during a raider attack. Brave defenders will be wounded, so periodically it will be necessary to organize a replacement, although outside combat conditions people are healed automatically over time.

Build rooms by connecting them

It is prudent to start planning the internal structure of your Vault from the very beginning. It is possible and even necessary to connect up to three rooms of the same type to improve their parameters. Moreover, they are more accessible for upgrades and show better results.

Attach Residents to specific premises

Simply grab and drag them, and the numbers above will show how efficiently the residents will work in a particular room. If the room is already filled to capacity, then the number indicates what effect the character will have when he/she is swapped with the worst performing person in the room. That is, the designation “plus two” indicates considerable indoor efficiency.

The radio room is an important thing!

Build a Radio Room, including broadcasting, to find new people, as well as maintain the satisfaction level of the shelter's inhabitants. The happiness boost only works if someone is working in the room - make sure there are enough workers in the room for a sufficient effect.

The secret to increasing happiness

If you do not consider transporting the Resident to another room that is more suitable for his profile, you can carefully listen to what the people themselves say to increase their happiness. Double-click on the room and read the messages above the heads of the characters, who will tell you about their desires or boast that everything is just fine.

How to maximize the effect of Vault Dwellers?

Even if the shelter dweller is not on a mission, he can be given weapons or armor protection. Armor also improves the characteristics of people, making them more efficient in their fields. It is prudent to put on weapons when attacking raiders or when Radioactive Cockroaches appear on the horizon.

It is possible to sell old items if you change your mind about using them.

How to deal with resource shortages?

If you are not in the game world, your reserves will not be consumed as they are during the game itself.

That is, if you have a shortage of resources, and a new batch of kids is not ready yet, just end the gaming session and return after a few tens of minutes. In another case, if you have energy for the premises, build a room that produces the required resource, immediately receiving a couple of units.

Sale of property

Click on the picture of the storage room (in the lower right corner, three cells further).

They told us at the Bethesda E3 conference. Immediately after the end of the show, the game became available in the App Store (the Android version has not yet been released, but they promise that it’s coming) and instantly soared to the top of the lists of the most downloaded applications in many countries. In terms of profitability, it even briefly surpassed the catastrophically popular candy Crush Saga.

Does this mean that Bethesda has upended all the foundations of mobile platforms like this, in one fell swoop?

Not really. In reality, everything is much more prosaic.

Vault Tower

The resounding success in the first month after its release was primarily due to the word in the title. But from the point of view of the basic gameplay, we got something similar to the classic — or Tiny Tower, if you take mobile games.

On the screen is a cutaway shelter. You become its keeper - either a puppeteer or an overseer who organizes the life of the bunker's inhabitants. Build a generator room to generate energy, or increase the area of ​​the water production laboratory? Who should be appointed head of the dining room, and who should be sent on a raid into the Wasteland (you will follow the adventures through text summaries in the spirit Progress Quest)? Isn’t it time for those two Sims over there, that is, the residents, that is, vault dwellers, to have kids? These and similar questions have to be resolved minutely.

I can’t say that the management came out with any depth. If you explain the principles Fallout Shelter On your fingers, three are enough: there is electricity so that all modules work non-stop, there is food to maintain the health of the inhabitants, and there is water, which prevents all living things from turning into radioactive ash.

The most important thing is to wisely assign people to rooms and determine the scope of work based on their skills and preferences, as seen in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. parameter system. Then the resource counters will remain stably in the green zone, and precious caps will begin to drip into your account.

The caps are spent on expanding the bunker - clearing the soil of stones, building new laboratories and socially significant premises. You can set up the production of Nuka Cola, equip a weapons room, a radio room, a fitness room, and so on. Gradually, the Shelter will go deeper into the ground, and dozens of people saved from radiation will be able to live in its “honeycomb”.

The price of progress

The development of a shelter is a slow process. You have to wait until the timer counts down the minutes of real time until the next incident. However, they do not offer to pay to speed things up. Shelter's fees are especially surprising given the way micropayments work here. The game seems to be shy about them: purchasing lunchboxes with items is hidden in the menu behind three clicks and does not appear. Buy it if you want, if you don’t want it, one day everything will come on its own.

You can speed up progress just like that, paying, however, with the chance of a critical failure. Fires, attacks by radioactive cockroaches, and raids by marauders do not allow the inhabitants of the shelter to live in peace. But if at first every problem is an event, then by the third to fifth repetition they begin to tire.

Unfortunately, this applies to everything: after a couple of hours, Shelter’s mechanics get stuck in one place. When the hundredth resident comes to you, everything will be played exactly the same as on the fiftieth and thirtieth residents, and only the routine scales directly proportionally.

The only consolation is writing... let's say, social research. The peaceful refuge turns into a branch of Guantanamo Bay, or rather a testing ground for a re-enactment of the Stanford experiment. However, here the game is let down by the lack of ways to interact with the townspeople: like in a museum - you can look, it’s better not to touch it with your hands.

Fallout Shelter makes a great first impression. This is also achieved by the charming adjustment of everything possible to the corporate style of Vault-Tec Industries: retro-futurism, a light country spirit, shelter residents drawn from Vault-Boy’s patterns... But otherwise it’s just a cute trifle. Decent, but not very durable.

However, given the sudden success, Bethesda may well develop the idea. We are interested.

As soon as I “celebrated” 4 game weeks in the shelter, I collected a little more than 70 settlers, poring over each one individually, goat-horned mutants came running and 52 settlers flew into oblivion. Neither the fairly powerful weapons nor the level of skill of the settlers stopped these assholes... They rush around the level, instantly jumping to another level so that you can’t keep up with them. Many of the players can boast of super-pumped Persians with powerful weapons in every room? It seems to me that without a paid robot, which the developers kindly offered us to buy, we cannot cope with these degenerates (without serious damage to the shelter). Inadequacy in the game balance... There is no desire to play again, reviving the corpses lying everywhere for crazy money.

I agree with the previous review. In fact, the developer allows you to upgrade the village at the very beginning with gifts and support, then regularly wipes it out to zero, extorting money for protection. It’s a complete bummer in terms of the fact that you can randomly get a fabulous level radscorpion at any time, which puts 30-40 residents of any equipment and level. Or a herd of death claws through the door that kill everyone. 74 characters with levels 30+, a herd of endlessly breeding mole rats appears - they all lie down. 35 stimulants were not enough. Fuck such games, not relaxation, but checking whether you have money on the card.

As a fan of the Fallout series, it is very difficult for me to be critical of the games; I will say even more, I really liked part 4. So, after seeing the peep of the battle and hearing the painfully familiar melodies, I disappeared into Shelter for a week. Iga provides a unique opportunity to become a shelter keeper; by the way, despite the cute picture, it is quite hardcore and, in my opinion, is one of the best 2D survival simulators. But for the sake of objectivity, we must admit that this is a port from mobile platforms with pronounced shortcomings of such applications. Shelter for a full-fledged gaming experience requires investing real money, and its uniformity and monotony begin to tire quite quickly. Moreover, there is essentially no final goal; after gaining 200 residents and a bunch of loot, Shelter continues without any clear goal. But overall the project turned out to be quite good - 7.0 points.

I played for a while... In general, this is not the place for those expecting something deep. The game reminded me of numerous clones of "Travian" - only the AI ​​takes on the responsibilities of the opponents. The only difference is that here, alas, doing all this is even more boring. Well, the whole defectiveness of the gameplay as a whole is revealed if, in parallel with this game, you replay the famous Dwarves, an advanced version of which I was hoping to get here. Overall, this is a game for very long and boring trips on public transport, when there is no book, and the external battery is capable of holding the smart phone to its destination. The game, alas, does not pretend to be anything more.

everything is very beautifully drawn, you can feel the spirit of fallout, but what is the point of the game after opening the last room... I collected 180 settlers, food and water are always at the maximum, but there is no point in constantly sending residents into the wasteland, one or two people are enough to bring all weapons and armor. I'm disappointed with the game, it feels like I'm playing a demo version that ends halfway through. I give it a 6 just for the picture.

Game for a couple of days. He created two shelters, the second appeared after everyone died in the first due to rapid development and the inability to repel cockroaches. In the second, I no longer made mistakes and now the death claws die in the fourth room, without killing anyone in the previous ones. I opened all the buildings, and there are a hundred or more settlers, and there is no point in building any more. From the wastelands they bring one blue item every 24 hours or more. Finding 21 golden settlers is not possible due to the fact that tasks for lunchboxes do not appear often, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to pay for them.

Let's be fair - the situation, as a rule, does not develop according to the best scenario for people living in the underground shelters of the Fallout universe. Bethesda Fallout Shelter for tablets and smartphones with Android / iOS gives us the opportunity to personally try to fix the situation for civilians in the post-apocalypse. We will have to carefully monitor the balance, produce food, water and energy, prevent attacks from mutants, raiders and other nasty creatures of the Wasteland, a real challenge... at first glance. But, oddly enough, as soon as you succeed, the pleasure from the game disappears due to the lack of further development of the gameplay.

What could go wrong when we're put in charge of a shelter? In Fallout Shelter, the early (and funniest) moments arise around almost every task. The gameplay is easy to understand - new civilians are born or recruited at your hideout, you must dig deep into the mountains to build living quarters for them, as well as water treatment plants, cafeterias to produce food and food, power plants to keep the above infrastructure running.

Workrooms are built instantly, you will have to wait until you earn enough caps to pay for the construction. Commendably, Fallout Shelter doesn't try to make you pay to speed things up. In fact, you won't even be able to do that.

Civilians, who are depicted in the signature Fallout Vault Boy style, are assigned to work in specific rooms using very simple controls, they earn resources faster if the job matches the parameters (stats) of the civilian. Thus, you should try to match the ideal job based on the civilian's skills to achieve the most ideal shelter in the shortest possible time. The catch is that in the first few days you will experience a lack of people for each station, or a lack of resources to manage the shelter. It is the lack of certain resources that creates interesting solutions in Fallout Shelter, which we reviewed. Do you want to provide your shelter with clean drinking water or plenty of food? Can you save money on another living space?

This is a kind of game of compromises. Every time you're ready to advance in development, a random raider attack, fire, or invasion of mutant cockroaches occurs to disrupt your perfectly planned development. The game can keep you on your toes and keeps you coming back for more. Cute couples chat with each other before disappearing from the camera's view to conceive a child, which is a special event in the game.

Unfortunately, the more your shelter grows, the faster this thoughtful approach fades. Fallout Shelter gets easier as it progresses, not harder. It seems like you are playing in reverse. A review of Fallout Shelter led us to a shelter with a population of over 150 people, of which 25 were wandering around without work. We no longer felt the need to optimize the operation of factories, since all resources were in abundance. The civilians are bored and there are no more missions or goals to unlock. You can still expand the storage deeper and build a sixth power plant or a third food production plant, but this will lead to an even greater surplus of resources. Have we completed the game? Or how?

Fallout Shelter desperately needs a set of challenges in its strong development phase, some kind of resource requirement needs to be created, otherwise a week of inconsistent play is enough to see all the content.

Overall the game idea is very good, the current Fallout Shelter seems like the basis for a deeper and better game that isn't here yet. You don't yet have visual solutions for your shelter, no additional settings. There are no trading platforms for trading with other players or trading caravans. There is no need to plan out a specific layout of rooms in your shelter, no need to keep the most important buildings close to the power plant in case of emergency. There is no need to prioritize producing certain products or thinking about a production line. Any of these features could make the game deeper and more interesting in the long run, as is the case with similar mobile games, be it FarmVille 2: Country Escape or Township.

The trade-off for this incredibly simple and consistent gameplay loop is Fallout Shelter's accessibility. Make no mistake, it's a lot of fun to develop your own shelter, fight off radioactive monsters and see what happens next. Fallout Shelter also offers some bonus currency, gently and unobtrusively asking you to spend money. You can use this currency to purchase card packs that supply a random selection of special characters, weapons, equipment or resources, but these packs are not a necessary or forced solution. Almost every element of the gameplay is old school mobile, with the main problem being anticipation.

Verdict

As the review of Fallout Shelter showed: the game is most interesting in the initial stages, when your shelter is not easy to make ends meet, and every raider attack poses a threat to your fragile community. Once your shelter is up and running, the fears disappear, and with them the pleasure of the game. Combine all this with the lack of long-term goals and you get an experience that's only enjoyable in the first few days; the game lacks long-term appeal.