Fallout Shelter (iOS)

Bethesda has been a major force in video game awesomeness for quite some time now. I remember playing The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall back in the 90s, and probably lost most of my senior year of college to TES III: Morrowind. Their acquisition of the Fallout series in the early 2000s resurrected the franchise, keeping it true to itself, but turning it into something even better. Fallout 4, due to be out late this fall, is one of the most highly-anticipated games of all time, and Bethesda has so far shown no real signs of disabusing fans of their hopes (unlike some other prominent industry giants). In order to throw some bones to the hungry fans – admittedly, some very tasty ones – Bethesda has released the free-to-play mobile game Fallout Shelter for iOS, with an Android verison coming soon. Does this new foray into casual gaming live up to the name? Read on and find out.

Duck and Cover

Anyone who's played previous Fallout games should be more than familiar with the basic storyline: after World War II, history played out a bit differently. Notably, the transitor and other key technologies never happened, the 60s and all that stuff never happened, yet things did continue to advance, even if everything did all have a weird 1950s aesthetic. In the latter half of the 21st century, the world was rocked by conflict, culminating in the Great War of 2077, which began and ended with a nuclear exchange that devastated the United States, and one would presume, the rest of the world.

It was something everyone saw coming for decades, however, and the US Government had long since begun a program of nationwide fallout shelters, known as "Vaults", built by government contractor Vault-Tec. Of course, it's a whole lot darker and less benevolent than it seems, and the other games in the series deal with those issues, taking place in the Wasteland long after the bombs had dropped.

Fallout Shelter departs from these games in that it takes place right after the events of 2077. You are placed in charge of a Vault (which you get to "name" with a three-digit number), and are tasked with expanding its production and activities and growing your population. Somehow, people keep seeking shelter in your Vault (isn't there supposed to be a LOT of radiation out there still?), but whatever, it's a game.

So, you think you're SPECIAL?

The basic gameplay of Fallout Shelter is pretty easy to get the hang of. Typical for free-to-play mobile games, there's a currency system, the Bottle Caps used as legal tender throughout the Wasteland, which you can earn (rather slowly) in-game, or purchase for a modest fee. Using your Caps, you expand your Vault by purchasing and placing specialized rooms. As your population grows, the more rooms you unlock, and each room is able to be upgraded a number of times. And as you'd expect for a mobile game, things get more and more expensive as you progress – the better to rope you in, my dear. Bottle Caps are acquired a variety of ways, but one of the most rewarding ways to make money is by completing objectives, of which you have three at any given time. You can also earn "Lunchboxes" this way, which are filled with cards that get you special weapons and outfits, more Caps, or special legendary Dwellers.

I'm getting ahead of myself, however. The core of the gameplay consists in managing three resources: Power, Food, and Water. There are specific production rooms that generate each of these – Power Generators and Nuclear Reactors for Power, Water Treatment and Water Purification for Water, and Diners, Gardens, and Nuka-Cola Bottlers for food. Failing to produce sufficient amounts of these rescources has negative consequences – Dwellers lose health if you don't produce enough food, and they will suffer from radiation if you don't produce enough water (radiation reduces maximum possible health). The most important resource of all, however, is Power, since if you don't produce enough of it, your other rooms will start shutting down, and this leads to Water and Food shortages. My first two Vaults, Vault 33 and Vault 0, failed spectacularly because I did not produce enough Power. It was only after I started Vault 183 (pop. 111 and counting!) that I realized I could not expand unless I had more than enough Power being produced.

Like other Fallout games, characters in Fallout Shelter are rated using the SPECIAL system (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck), which is all-important in this game. Each production room operates using one of these sttributes. For example, Strength is used to produce Power – assign Dwellers with high Strength to a Power Generator, and this will reduce production times and increase the likelihood of a successful rush (more on that). Each attribute is important in its own way – Intelligence is used in Science Labs and Medbays to produce Stimpaks and Rad-Aways, and Charisma is used in radio rooms that attract new Dwellers to your fault and increase everyone's happiness (and thus, their efficiency). Each attribute has its own training facility too – you can send your Dwellers to the Classroom to increase Intelligence, or to the Armory to increase their Perception. My favorite is the Lounge, where you send Dwellers to go and drink, which somehow increases Charisma.

Dressed for Success

It wouldn't be Fallout without weapons and outfits, and Fallout Shelter has its share of each. Weapons range from crappy BB Guns to the insanely powerful Guided Fat Man (apparently it IS a good idea to fire a nuclear weapon in an enclosed space). These are used primarily to kill Rad Roaches when they infest one of your rooms, but occasionally your Vault will be struck by Raiders, who sap your resources and attack your Dwellers until you kill them all. Rad Roach attacks can be random, but this can also happen (along with Vault fires) if you rush a room and fail. Of course, if you do it right, you get the resources more quickly and some extra bottle caps to boot.

Outfits range from the ridiculous, like the Wrestling Outfit and the Mayor Outfit, to the post-apocalyptically practical, like the Wasteland Gear and Battle Armor. The purpose of outfits is to boost your SPECIAL attributes, and each outift has its own advantages. However, this is one area where I found that Fallout Shelter was extremely shallow. Because you only ever need one attribute in any given room, outfits with say +2E +2S +1A, while they look like they might be cool, are useless. In reality, you end up dressing everyone in a given room with whatever outfit gives +3 to the relevant attribute. For example, everyone involved in food production (except in the Nuka-Cola Bottler) should wear the Handyman Jumpsuit, which gives you +3 Agility. And apparently Nightwear is best for Charisma, which means your Radio Rooms will be filled with men in silk pajamas and ladies in sexy negligées.

You acquire weapons and outfits either by earning Lunchboxes (or buying them outright) or by sending Dwellers out into the Wasteland. When you send a Dweller out, make sure he or she is well equipped with the best weapon and outfit, and that they have more than enough Stimpaks and Rad-Aways to brave the harsh environment. The longer they're out there, the more stuff you get, and the more Caps you get. Just remember that for every minute they're out there, it will take half as long to get back. So if you send one of your Dwellers out for six hours, you won't be able to get all that good stuff for another three.

Breeding Like Mutant Rabbits

There are two ways to get more Dwellers: the slow way, which involves sending out radio signals and hoping for the best; and the fast way, which involves some good ol'-fashioned babymaking. You have to build Living Quarters to increase the maximum amount of Dwellers your Vault can hold (population is capped at 200, though), but if you happen to place a man and a woman in the same Living Quarters, they'll start dancing, and we all saw Footloose and know where that leads. They run off into the back room, their happiness goes up to 100%, then the man comes strolling out, with the lady dragging a bit behind because she now has one in the oven. At one point, I just had a stud farm going, where I kept one guy in the Living Quarters and just kept sending women in there. When the child is born, it will stroll around the Vault for some time, until it grows up and can be assigned to a production or training room. Just be careful that you don't send the guy's daughter or sister in there. They'll just comment about how nice it is to spend time with family, and no child will come of it (and mercifully so).

Vault Boy and Friends

The graphics in Fallout Shelter are colorful and fun, which stands in sharp and intentional contrast to the disturbing subject matter of nuclear holocaust. In this sense, it's right in line with the rest of the series, which is known for its dark and ironic sense of humor. But while other Fallout games have either been isometric or full-on 3D, Fallout Shelter has chosen a more suitable presentation for a mobile game, opting for 2D characters and 3D-ish rooms. That is, the rooms clearly have depth, but it's not like you can change the side-view angle at all. The Dwellers themselves are all variations of the Vault Boy character, whom you will recognize as the mascot of the Fallout series. They come in various skin colors and hairstyles and of course as male or female. What's really funny is that all children have heads that look like what they will become as an adult, so it's not uncommon to see fat and balding little tykes milling about the Vault.

The sound is unremarkable – very, very low music in the background, and sound effects for collecting resources and levelling up, collecting Caps, etc. Everything is upbeat, which fits the art style. There are no voices, but your characters do talk. If you double-tap a room, it will zoom in, and you can see what your Dwellers are saying, which is usually some repetitive dialogue about how many Vaults there might be out there, or how they're feeling, etc. Some of it is funny, but I think they could have put in a few more easter eggs here.

Mutually Assured Distraction

There is no doubt that Fallout Shelter is a good little game. It's highly, highly addictive, and manages to be a perfect exemplar of the free-to-play mobile game in that regard. One welcome departure is that the pressure to spend actual money is not as overt as it is in other games, and it's certainly not a pay-to-win type system. You can actually progress really far relatively easily without purchasing a single 99-cent Lunchbox. Where it does get you, however, is that later in the game, when upgrading your higher-end rooms and building new ones, it can get really expensive. Unless you have lots of dedicated Wasteland runners out there getting Caps for you (I have 5 at this time, with my 111+ Dwellers), you'll never be able to make the same kind of periodic updates you made early on, and change becomes rare. That is, unless you're willing to shell out some real-world Caps.

And I might as well list all my gripes here. I don't think the game has enough depth, though I hope this is something that changes, and Bethesda starts adding new stuff. As it is, there aren't that many rooms to get, and you unlock all of them at 100 population anyway, which is only half of the max population. But again, the good part about a game like this is that they can simply keep adding new content. One thing the game seems well-suited to, but which is curiously absent, is any kind of multiplayer interaction. The whole raiding aspect could easily turn into a PvP element, and it would also be nice to allow players to somehow trade weapons and outfits. As it is, you can sell every item into oblivion (no, not Oblivion) for 10 Caps, regardless of quality.

Lack of depth hits at another level, too, though. What makes a Fallout game is the wide-open world, the exploration, the fact that no two play-throughs will ever be the same, because there are so many different ways to play it. I think this is why Bethesda was the perfect candidate to pick up the torch once Black Isle Studios was shut down. Fallout Shelter really only has one single way to play, and once you get it, you're done. Vaults may start out somewhat differently, depending on what part you develop first, but in the end they will all turn out the same. There's no way to have a different focus, no branching tech tree, nothing like that. This severely limits the game's replay value, since once you've built one Vault, you've built them all.

One more thing I found lacking had to do with the interface. While for the most part, the familiar Pip-Boy design is useful and easy to navigate, the weapons/outfits system is unwieldy. There's no way to view all your Dwellers in a list at once and switch out weapons and outfits. You have to select each individual Dweller, going room to room or down the list. It would be nice if I could rank them by most powerful weapon, for instance, so I'd know whose BB Gun I have to trade in for a Hunting Rifle.