I’m not a huge fan of the “Fallout” game series, so when Fallout Shelter, a mobile game based on the series, was released, I wasn’t very interested. I happened upon it recently while browsing games on the PS5, and thought I’d give it another chance. I found a pretty interesting worker placement game for which a non-mobile platform like the PlayStation might not be the best choice on which to play it.
The Fallout games are all based in a world where a nuclear war has taken out the majority of the world’s population, leaving scattered bands to sift among the ruins of civilization, a world in which all the sci fi dreams of the 1930s came true. Robots, especially, are everywhere, and the PIP boy, a wearable omnicomputer, is the owner’s means to navigate a world gone strange.
Because nuclear war had become inevitable, the government had time to build vast underground shelters, called Vaults, in which to preserve the American Way of Life. In Fallout 4, the only game in the series I’d previously played, the people in the Vault were placed into suspended animation. In Fallout Shelter, they are very much alive and present in the world.
(Apologies if I got any of this wrong; I have not played much Fallout).
In Fallout Shelter, you are the omniscient Overseer of a fallout shelter that was left unfinished as Armageddon approached. Your job is to take in what survivors you can and expand the shelter while fending off disasters such as fire, mutant rats, mutant bugs, regular old mutants, and raiders who care nothing about their lives or yours.
Even when things are going well, there is a constant struggle to provide power, water and food to the survivors. You meet those needs by building the relevant facilities, which then must be staffed by survivors who have some relevant skills.
Most facilities are locked by population. Some survivors will show up now and again, though you can increase that chance by building a radio station and working it with charismatic vaultmems. Occasionally, survivors can be found while scavenging the countryside on quests (more on that later). By far, though, the best way of recruiting new survivors is to make them yourself.
You know how to do that, right? When a boy survivor and a girl survivor love each other very much, they go to the barracks and make small talk, then begin to dance, and then they run to the bedroom. Three hours later, a baby you can name is born. And three hours after that, you have yourself a new worker. Traits are inherited, so choose the parents wisely.
One time, I was gathering an exploration team in a barracks to ensure they all had the gear and consumables they would need in their quest. It was a mixed group. I stepped away from the PlayStation for a moment, and when I returned, one of the women was pregnant. Mr. Lothario was already starting on the second…
Have to watch those horny little buggers every single moment.
Which is actually… kinda bad. Once your workers have completed their tasks, they sort of mill around aimlessly. If you don’t click them, they will not do anything until you do. They will happily starve without you to feed them.
Once your Vault reaches a decent size, you’ll have to do a LOT of clicking, and it never really lets up… There is even a mysterious guy who shows up in a trenchcoat every few minutes. If you can locate and click on him in the five seconds he is there, you will get a decent chunk of bottle caps, the game’s iconic currency. Fallout Shelter is a game that wants your eyeballs whenever you have it playing.
Once your Vault has grown large enough, you can build the Overseer’s Bureau, where you would presumably sit if you had a corporeal form. This lets you take on Quests, and it is in these quests that the game’s storyline and actual goals are revealed.
My boyfriend said that he didn’t remember the quest system when he played this game back in the day. I’m not sure if it was new since then, or he just hadn’t played it long enough to unlock it.
With quests, you gear up a team with weapons and armor (initially looted from dead attacking raiders, but eventually made by you). You’ll need Stimpacks for healing, and Radaway for radiation poisoning, as well. These are also made by you, though some can be found in the ruins you explore. Quests have you looking for survivors, returning stolen gifts (for the current Christmas event), or befriending animals to take back to the Vault as pets.
Strong, perceptive and agile characters will do well on these raids; unfortunately, these people will likely already have vital jobs in the generator, food preparation, and water treatment rooms. It may be some time before you can spare the people to do the quests, but they are nonetheless vital.
Quests are the best possible means to get new armor and weapons and the raw materials with which to make more. They are also kinda fun.
After a lengthy journey to the quest area (a journey that can be sped up by spending consumables that can be purchased in the cash shop), your team arrives at the quest location, which you then explore room by room. Sometimes you happen upon raiders or even survivors from another Vault. Sometimes you can negotiate with them, but typically you end up in a fight. Hope you remembered the Stimpaks and the Radaway!
Once successful (or, often, once forced to return), your team heads back to the Vault, where they find they cannot enter because they have too much loot and you didn’t provide enough storage rooms to hold it. Oops.
It can take ten or more hours for your team to get to the quest area; this is where Bethesda wants you to pay. The waits are agonizing, but that is a testament to how much fun these ruins explorations are.
So my quick take on Fallout Shelter: It’s a clicky worker placement game that demands your attention when you’re playing it, such that it’s a race to do all the clicking and shut it down before some disaster you must deal with happens.
The Quests are the reason to continue playing the game. Gearing up and working through the stories is fun – the writing is clever and the battles are tense.
However, playing it on a home console might not be best. Clicks that would take an instant on a mobile device require hunting through the rooms with a controller, and the time to start and pause the game is nowhere near as easy as swiping it to the background is on a phone.
If you liked “Fallout Shelter”, please enjoy Harlan Ellison’s short story, “A Boy and His Dog”.