Fallout Shelter is the first mobile game from desktop and console giant Bethesda Softworks, of fame primarily for their work on the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises. Bethesda is no stranger to success, and the titles developed by their in-house division (Bethesda Game Studios) have generally been smash hits. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were all highly successful games, and the upcoming Fallout 4 already has fans hugely excited for the next installment of the modernized post-nuclear role-playing phenomenon.

Fallout Shelter is, essentially, a tease for this game. It’s about giving fans of the franchise (and new players, of course) a little handout to say, “Hey, thanks for liking Fallout, maybe pre-order Fallout 4 ???” And that’s what makes Fallout Shelter so likeable – in principle. To get to the point: at no junction does this game demand you spend any money at all. It’s not even encouraged. And that’s because this game is a marketing tool – it’s just about promoting the brand. Can you spend money in Fallout Shelter? Sure. But doing that to the tune of more than $5-10 would kind of be like buying an entire set of collectible trading cards, or getting to skip every line in an amusement park. Sure, it might be fun initially, but it would actually make things worse by the time all was said and done. It would take away from the magic, the joy of the game, of patience rewarded.

Most free-to-play games understand this quite well [and abuse it like an offshore corporate tax haven]. No matter how much money you throw at them, they’re generally quite happy to let you get to a point where you’re going to want or need more. Those are the mechanics of the business – you have to keep players coming back. Fallout Shelter is, oddly, quite the opposite. Initially, you might want to spend a few dollars just to jump-start your vault (more on the mechanics later), but once you’re at a population of 100+ and everybody’s got a gun and outfit to equip, spending real money makes even less sense. And that’s actually the game’s primary drawback – there is very little to keep you coming back after a couple weeks of consistent play. I’m personally pretty much over it at this point. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Fallout Shelter: The Long Version

Fallout Shelter is a beautifully simple game from a structural point of view. You have a vault. You can build rooms in the vault, and people can do things in the rooms. The vault is just a two-dimensional grid laid out like you’re looking inside an ant farm (except it’s a people farm). Rooms are 1×3 in dimension, elevator shafts (of which you only need one, thankfully) are 1×1, and most rooms can be “merged” – just build the same room type next to it, and it will expand into a 1×6, and you can add one more room next to that for a 1×9. The latter is the maximum size of any room. You keep building and building to advance in the game.

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