Fallout Shelter - Human breeding simulator in your mobile!

Well, we have to prevent the extinction of humanity from the world, haven't we? Endless harvesting of the carrots, grains, apples, tomatoes, and other crops is lame. The breeding of hens, sheep, cows and other creatures is boring. We want something new. Something fresh. Something that wasn't here yet. We're going to breed people. But how? And how to make it as effective as possible?

We have to make an apocalypse and start putting people underground (no, I didn't play Fallout, but it's on my to-play list) into an antinuclear shelter you couldn't escape. Only the Big Brother can allow you some walks while watching everything on his dirty display full of fingerprints.

This is exactly what the mobile game Fallout Shelter is about. So let's look at it more closely.

Plot

There is no plot. There is absolutely no story in it. It's just a survival simulator of human civilization.

Graphics

The graphics are quite elaborate because room upgrades are known, and the best thing about it is to zoom vault in and out. In the furthest position, the vault is displayed in 2D, and when zoomed in, it switches to 3D. The dwellers are drawn in classic fallout style and fit perfectly into the environment.

Gameplay

You are the Big Brother who is in charge of one vault. In the beginning, you must select some cool number. Your dog's birth date is not that cool. It wants something more, uh, apocalyptic.

And you can start building the best shelter for everyone who is searching for some shelter. You start with nothing. Your vault is just an entrance and one living quarter, and it's up to you to improve it. Of course, there is a tutorial to explain to you every little fart.

You are accepting new dwellers simply by dragging them in the vault exactly where you want them. They all have different stats, so you have to combine the workers so that the production of water, food, and electricity is as efficient as possible. When the room is full of workers, by moving the dweller into it, you automatically arrange his replacement with the worst of them. Stats are hidden under the term SPECIAL, and it took me a long time to figure out that each letter represents a stat (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck). Who would expect it from a special? I thought they were just special.

All settlers are located in a table that can be filtered. For each one, you see his health or whether radiation is affecting him, level, stats, satisfaction with life in the vault, the time remaining to the next action, and the place where he/she is/is working.

The screenshot comes from a time of great crisis. The only crisis that hit my vault, when the dwellers suffered from a lack of everything. They didn't produce enough electricity, which meant that there was no energy to process water and make food. Their HP were falling, and radiation affected them. That made them very unhappy, so they became less productive, so it could be said that a deadlock occurred. Eventually, we got out of it, and no bigger disaster ever happened. In addition to fires, raids of some bandits and infestation of beetles and some rat's mutants, or what it was.

But since every dweller has at least some weapon and clothes, there is no problem with those accidents. The only problem is with children and pregnant women. Well, I don't mind children, you can't equip anything to them, but even when the pregnant woman has a bazooka with her, she starts confusingly running around the vault with just a little suggestion of danger.

Inventory

I mentioned some equip. In the beginning, the only way to get some gear is to send the dweller to the wasteland where they can collect a pretty decent loot. But you can't forget to give him some medicine in the bag either to cancel the effects of radiation or to heal. Otherwise, he will die. But when he dies, you don't have to despair. You can relive it. It only costs money in the form of caps.

Anything found, whether it's clothes, a weapon, or a junk to craft, will be stored in the inventory. But it has a limited capacity that can be expanded by building a storage room.

You can also view your collection of items in the survival guide.

Rooms

I already mentioned some of them. For functional vault, you will need living quarters that increase dweller capacity, a power station for electricity, water treatment for water and canteen. Without these things, you can't make it, and you will be forced to upgrade them gradually. By placing up to three of the same rooms next to each other, you can enlarge the room. And they can all be upgraded to better version twice.

As the number of dweller increases, you will gradually unlock the other rooms. Storage room for enhancing the capacity of items you can have, crafting room for the first-aid kits, radiation medicine, weapons, clothing, etc. Rooms for improving the stats of your workers and so on.

But the most important room is the Overseer's Office with the access to missions.

There is really a lot of rooms and so your vault will slowly but surely grow bigger.

Missions

I don't know the exact number of dwellers you need, but when you got them, you will be able to expand gameplay with quests. After unlocking and building the Overseer's Office, you can send the dwellers to various missions where you have a chance to get a lot of caps and things to help you to boost all the inhabitants of the vault.

First, you choose the right quest candidates, because quests have mostly some requirements. In most cases, it's just a minimum level and damage, but occasionally special clothing is needed.

Missions finally add some action to the game, even if the only thing you can do is to move the dwellers around the vault, loot the objects, and occasionally deal some critical hit.

The biggest disadvantage of missions is the fact that it can take up to tens of hours. You can skip them via Nuka-Cola, but you'll run out of it once, and you have to buy it. Once you reach your destination, you click and navigate the dwellers and after finishing quest wait a few hours until they arrive home to collect loot.

Human breeding simulator

You will have to multiply people. Sometimes someone knocks on the door of the vault, but that happens so little that the only way to raise a population is sex. It's a fairly simple procedure with 100% success.

Put a man into living quarter.
Put a woman into living quarter.
Wait for some woohoo.
Send pregnant woman back to work.
Collect babies.
Repeat.

Today I made all the women pregnant. Yeah, I'm a pervert. It's a shame there is nothing more than just smiles when they do it. Winky face. But sometimes it is group sex (2 couples do it at once).

And surely you won't be surprised that by such sex you can bring the mood of a dweller up to 100%. That's especially working on men.

Gaming currency

As a game currency, you mainly use the caps you get for everything. But the greatest source of it is a completion of missions and exploration of the wasteland. However, you can also get it by filling objectives, leveling the dwellers and keeping them happy.

Another currency is Nuka-Cola. It is rare currency, but not unreachable. When you get the Overseer's Office, you get about 20 Nuka-Cola, and it's up to you how long it'll last. You can get it further in missions.

Microtransactions and ads

What surprised me most about the game is that it is playable even without microtransactions. These are more than voluntary because there is absolutely no energy present and nothing prevents you from playing. Sure, it's a game you play every once in a while, and then you're done, but nothing prevents you from progressing.

To speed up the game experience, you can buy lunchboxes with gear, pets, Nuka-Cola or Mr. Handy, your robot helper. But you can live well without it, or you can get it from quests.

And the ads? They totally lack in the game so that nothing will spoil your game.

Summary

After a long time, I found a game that can be played without microtransactions, it's not full of ads and is playable. I play it for about ten days, and in the first days, I was completely addicted to it. In every free moment, I was playing it. It's a bit strange for a game where the gameplay is not quite action, but it still made me entertained. And most of all, as one of the few games you can play even offline! Which is definitely a big plus.

I just didn't like unnecessarily long waiting in the mission, and occasionally not working move of one dweller from one room to another. If you need it the most, you won't be able to move him. They are too tiny.

My rating is 4.5/5.0.