Fallout Shelter - reviews about the game. Fallout Shelter mobile game review: monetization, social component and player retention Role model

I said that in my family everything is a little different from ordinary people. The fact is that my dad is a game designer, and just an enthusiastic fan of games. On the one hand, this is great - we have a lot of collectible figurines, posters, and other goodies at home. But on the other hand, the impressionable nature of my beloved dad overshadows the matter. As soon as he catches fire with some idea, he immediately runs to implement it. So, for example, after playing enough of Fallout Shelter, he wanted to build his own shelter in case of an impending third world war. Saved only by a not very large salary - there is not enough money for a land plot and subsequent construction work (but he decided to dig a basement in a village house).

Be that as it may, I have a small overview of the strengths and weaknesses Fallout Shelter from me and dad.

Gameplay

pros

  • A wide variety of modules for building a bunker, with all the necessary functionality: energy generation, water extraction, radio, reproduction, and so on.
  • Upgrading modules - both a simple improvement in characteristics for the currency, and expansion of the area through the combination of up to three identical modules.
  • Challenge - resources are limited, and the player needs to find a balance in order to survive.
  • Tactics - you need to be able to distribute the resources and tasks of your wards.
  • Pumping and customization of characters - from appearance and names to equipment and characteristics.
  • The mood of the characters is an important detail that makes the wards more alive. With a bad mood, they work worse. You can learn about the mood by observing the character, what he is talking about, what he is dissatisfied with.
  • Traveling in the Wasteland - the ability to send characters for reconnaissance. The mechanics of the game does this through a text box that describes the events that happened to the character. An interesting moment, thanks to which players have to monitor not only the shelter, but also the outside world.
  • Random events - fires, raiders and glad. cockroaches! And the larger the bunker, the more difficult it is to keep track of everything.
  • Rewards and goals - for those who do not know how to play the sandbox.
  • Low threshold of entry - learning the game takes place thanks to stylish slides and tips. Conveniently.
  • Acceleration of production is a special ability that allows you to develop faster in case of success, and destroy everything in case of failure.

Minuses

  • There is simply no dynamics of what is happening - while the characters are working, the player has nothing to do.
  • It is not possible to select the difficulty of the game.
  • Random events are repeated over and over again, without changing the features and complexity. The bunker is always attacked by three raiders, and nothing else. It is very boring.
  • Resources are not collected automatically, and the player has to constantly click on them with the mouse. If you do not collect resources, then the module will not produce new ones.
  • Characters do not react to anything on their own, even if they are attacked, you have to manually give instructions.
  • Unable to speed up game time.
  • You can develop the bunker only by increasing the number of characters, and this is very long and tedious.
  • Some goals appear ahead of time and annoy with their impracticability.
  • You can not change the layout and move the modules.
  • No loot from raiders, only experience.
  • There is no multiplayer, and it is impossible to compare your bunker with another in any way. In an endless sandbox environment, this is a big miss.

pros

  • Fallout style, fans will appreciate it.
  • The feeling of a living world due to the good detail effects on the background.
  • Intuitive interface - when resources are ready to be collected, the module is highlighted with a clickable zone. The same goes for character levels.
  • Animation of work in modules - each workplace has its own animation.
  • Ability to disable most animations when zooming - saves device resources.

Minuses

  • The improvement of modules is not displayed graphically in any way.

pros

  • Each action has its own sound effect.
  • The sound creates a feeling of a living world - if you bring the camera closer, you can hear the crackle of lamps, voices, and the noise of mechanisms. If you give it away, then the wind, the crackling of stones, and so on.

Minuses

  • The sound disappears when the device goes to sleep.

Script and dialogue

pros

  • Through monologues, the characters talk about their mood. A good solution to get rid of the "Sims mood strips".
  • The characters flirt with each other and actively use pick-up techniques.

Minuses

  • The characters are not alive at all. They almost always smile, because of which the feeling of post-apocalysis is lost.
  • The characters do not communicate with each other in any way, except for flirting.

Beautiful graphics and sound create a sense of the living world in the bunker, in contrast to the dead wasteland on the surface. The first half hour of the game captivates and intrigues, but the potential is exhausted due to monotonous actions and repetitions of random events. Going out into the wasteland is almost useless, and losing a character there means 5 hours of waiting for the birth of a new member of the bunker, which is fatal, given how dependent the game is on the number of characters. The inability to speed up the game and automate the collection of resources, in conditions where the same thing happens, is catching up. As a result, the game comes down to a completely predictable and monotonous clicker sandbox.

But dad says he's a kid, and he's already bought a shovel so that he can go dig a bunker in the village over the weekend. And I'm scared to imagine what ideas some blockbuster will lead him to ...

In anticipation of the release of the new part of Fallout 4, Bethesda has released an original project for mobile devices called Fallout Shelter. This is a simulator of a shelter, in a post-apocalyptic world already familiar to us. It was released on Apple mobile platforms on June 14, 2015, and on Android only two months later on August 13, 2015.

Not much has been written reviewsFallout Shelter in Russian, English and many other languages ​​of the world, so I will try to be concise and informative.


The goal of the game is to build a shelter suitable for the life of the survivors of a nuclear war. To do this, you need to dig the earth deep under the mountain, like the greedy dwarf from the works of Tolkien. The mechanics are simple and adaptive. There are 3 resources necessary for life - food, water and electricity, in order to produce them, it is necessary to build the appropriate premises and send people to work in them. The survivors have S.P.E.C.I.A.L. characteristics that are standard for the games of the universe, which can be pumped in the gym, classroom or even a bar (this is where you can pump charisma). In the first couple, a whole line of potential tenants is lining up for you, but then you will have to work as a cupid and naturally increase the population of your bomb shelter. The main source of income is the wastelands, to which you will send the strongest and most courageous inhabitants. The game has a completely unobtrusive donation, which practically does not affect the gameplay. Otherwise, this is an ordinary mobile simulator with RPG elements - upgrade characters, complete simple tasks, get caps and lunchboxes as a reward, in which you will find weapons, stimpacks, and most importantly, unique residents from the history of the game series.

The main disadvantage of the game is the lack of the Russian language and the fairly rapid achievement of the peak in the game (the construction of the last room). I hope these problems will be solved in future updates, but for now, our site will help you fight some of them.

You can get acquainted not only with review Fallout Shelter, but also with .

In order to free download Fallout Shelter you can follow the link (everything is absolutely legal and without using torrent):

Or you can download hacked version of Fallout Shelter without updates on the w3bsit3-dns.com website.

The game has gained wild popularity lately, perhaps because of its unusualness, not forced donation and brand. Everyone should at least once immerse themselves in this world to determine whether such a game is to their liking, but it definitely deserves attention.

Most likely, over time, the toy will be released on other platforms. Not yet known will it come outFalloutShelter onWindowsPhone or PC but we will be following developments.

Have a nice game!

Imagine a post-apocalyptic world in which strict rules of survival apply, a world in which people have become the most valuable resource. After a horrific nuclear war, the few survivors have to hide from aggressive mutated creatures, angry bandits-raiders and deadly radiation. Someone was lucky to hide behind the huge walls of small towns, and someone had to settle in underground bunkers - deep underground complexes. Take control of one of these shelters and try to survive in an aggressive environment and the game offers.

you can lose

Let's be honest: - not the first game about the development of a vertical settlement. Over the past three years, I have repeatedly met similar projects, similar to each other, like two drops of water. Their feature is simple gameplay, 99% of which you just wait while mining orders are completed. Such games do not provide for any troubles: develop peacefully, slowly add floors to your outbuildings and complain about the biting donat. And here we must pay tribute - they know how to make a knight's move! Your bunker is a real war zone, where every mistake can result in the death of all residents or massive destruction, which will ultimately lead to the death of all residents...

A good settlement must constantly take care of the most basic resources: water, food and electricity. Without food, people will slowly lose health and die; without water, the level of radiation will begin to grow, negatively affecting all living things; without electricity, entire rooms and even floors will be cut off, so that it will not be possible to produce either water or food, not to mention more specialized resources. It may seem to you that keeping track of such banal elements is easy and you are quite prepared for everything, but I would not be so sure if I were you. Periodically, new potential wards will visit the bunker, which in any case should be taken under your wing. Each person can only do one thing at a time, so there are strong management skills. Someone copes better with strength work, someone is an expert in science, and someone is not averse to killing a dozen kids a la rabbit. The scatter of the parameters of the heroes is quite large, but there is nothing complicated in it. Each building displays a letter that is responsible for the required parameter to perform the corresponding work. Compared, appointed, won.

As coins for building new rooms and upgrading old ones, are, uh, bottle caps? I'm sorry, my knowledge of the world is not that deep, so just accept this fact as a given. The main method to earn them is to speed up the production of one of your rooms. Well, when you push workers, there is a possibility that things will not go as planned, and disaster will occur. Among other things, fires and cockroach attacks are the most common. If there are enough personnel in the room, then it will not be difficult to put out the fire, but if you are unlucky and an empty, say, kitchen caught fire, then the fire will quickly spread to neighboring rooms. What is the risk? Well, people will start taking damage - losing health. Some may even die in an unequal battle with the elements. This is the case when everything is good when it is good and very bad when it is bad. After fixing the problem, you are again free to take risks and speed up work in a particular room. It should be remembered that the probability of failure with each subsequent attempt in the same place increases (over time decreases).

You won't leave!

While you are online, you can actively collect resources, because after 5-10 minutes each of your production rooms is filled to capacity and people stop producing stuff. Thus, it is only occasionally not profitable to enter your bunker - everything will be idle. As long as you keep an eye on the non-stop production, the levels of workers relentlessly increase, which promises a small reward in caps. In this case, you can not even risk speeding up the work. Passively develop yourself, add new rooms from time to time, and accept new brothers who accumulate at the entrance to the bunker ... But it wasn’t there! First of all, never leave your gaming device in active mode unattended for more than a minute - during this time a random event may occur in any of the rooms. Do not even hope to outwit the system by abruptly exiting the game - it will remain active for a while longer, long enough for you to return to the huge graveyard. The dead, however, can be resurrected for the caps, but when there are about 30 of them, no "coins" will be enough.

But there are more problematic situations - attacks on the bunker. Armed raiders (local bandits) or mutant animals may well visit "you" home and knock on the main door with their feet, so much so that it will fly off the hinges. Having made their way inside, the opponents will start talking nicely with the local population in the language of bullets and fangs. Immediately there will be general alarm, panic and chaos will begin. The enemies are not very smart, but they can use your elevators. They will quickly spread through the floors and cause a lot of damage to both residents and resource depots. If at the time of the attack you already had little water or food, write wasted. To protect yourself from the deplorable consequences of such situations, you need to equip your wards with clothes and weapons. These items can be obtained in two ways: by sending one of the people into the wild wasteland (outside the bunker) or by opening a case with random contents. Outdoor travel takes many hours of time, so at such moments it is better to turn off the game, after making sure that the warehouses are full. Your scout should be given first-aid kits and radiation protection kits so that on his return they will not find his corpse.

As for cases - they, like caps, can be obtained for completing random quests that are issued one after another ( put out 10 fires, sell weapons, collect 200 water, etc.). Thus, the gamer is constantly busy with useful work. If you are completely unbearable, you can buy several containers for real currency. They will not bring much benefit, but they can open up profitable bonuses for you (rare equipment or even an elite character). In general, it is this roulette game that is the most interesting part, because inside each box of goodies there are as many as four gifts, and all of them are for you. Immediately remembered one cartoon. The influence of the donation on the game is minimal, since in addition to the indicated one, you can only buy an automated resource collector bot, which is of little use. It is the latest acquisition of the project, as it appeared already with the release of the version. The bot works only within the floor, which makes it not the most effective investment.

You turn out to be a pimp...

A feature of the project can also be called a system of reproduction of residents. Its causality and inadequacy is somewhat reminiscent of. First you need to build a residential quarter, which will not only increase the maximum population of the bunker, but also allow the characters to retire. Further, manually it is necessary to move the man and the woman into one such room and wait. First they exchange a dozen or two compliments, then they dance strangely, and then they go to the back compartment to get to know each other better. In a couple of seconds, the woman will be pregnant (month, commercials, on the 6th). Now it remains to wait again until she magically gives birth to a baby about 8 years old. Pregnant women and children cannot participate in events, so they are extremely vulnerable to threats. It also means that while breeding is in full swing, you have two fewer people working, which means that resources are slowly going into the red. And what to do - there is always not enough population, and in order for new people to come to the bunker, you need to send radio messages, which is a rather lengthy task.

When you launch the game for the first time, you will feel how addictive it is. Indeed, it will turn out only when the battery of your device finally sits down. I want to finish another quest, send another guy to scout, or risk speeding up the extraction of water one last time. And it never ends. No matter how I tried, run the project on Bluestacks(PC) I couldn't, but I don't really want to charge my tablet every day. Yes, and my main work on the second day of the game comes down to mass reproduction. To be more clear: there are no morals and rules here - you can bring everyone with everyone (but only M + F, of course). This has to be done non-stop. When there are under 30 residents, it becomes impossible to keep track of who is the son, who is the mother, and who is the grandfather - he threw everyone into the living room, and wait ... It's a little disgusting, I'll tell you. But fun, I guess. Plus, residents don't age beyond adulthood, so production can be run non-stop without delay.

Graphically, the game just looks great: detailed, colorful and humorous. At any time, the picture can be zoomed in to see the sights or find a place for new rooms. If you need to do a full crawl or just reduce the amount of lag - there is an option to reduce the image so much that the 3D effects and most of the animation will turn off. Unfortunately, the animation here is done, it seems to me, rather badly. The characters slovenly pretend to work, waving their arms, make stupid identical faces, shoot with their backs and do not move their mouths at all. Their external variety is poor, and although random remarks are amusing, they often do not correspond to what is happening and logic. Saved here and on the music, as it is simply not there. Most of the time you will have to listen to the noise of electricity generators and water pumps, so already in the first 10 minutes you will want to completely turn off the soundtrack. No, well, there is one melody during the occurrence of dangerous events, but it is unlikely that 10 seconds of a song played each time will be very captivating. Education is also not particularly replete with advice, and Russian is not listed among the supported languages, although there is not much to translate there.

findings

I don't want to go into the building part as it's no different from other games. I can only say one thing: it is better to have the same rooms three at a time side by side so that their overall efficiency increases, and the price of improvement decreases. Many more people can work in such rooms at the same time, but the events in them are more problematic, so you should always leave at least three workers there. In general, the project is very high quality, original and really worthy of attention, but, as in the case of Cinderella, after a day or two the magic fades away and you find yourself in front of a pumpkin. The variety of opponents is tiny, the soundtrack is disgusting, and the gameplay is simply not able to hold for a long time. More precisely, he is capable, but you will not be able to constantly sit in afterburner mode, tormenting your fingers from morning to evening - it gets boring. There is no donat, it is rather made in the style of "Pay for Cheats" - it speeds up the passage, which will only help you get to the point faster "tired". The vaunted addition added really few innovations. The revenue that they managed to get on the platform in just a few weeks could at least somehow affect the patch.

My opinion? This product has neither mid nor late game. There is no convenient bestiary with filters by tags, no detailed explanation of some aspects of the gameplay, no way to control a large group of people at the same time or issue mass orders. One by one, dragging your inhabitants from room to room is not very fun, there is not enough process automation. came out fun, exciting, but it seems to me that many freak out after the first loss. I prepared pretty well - I reviewed a bunch of video clips before the release. At the moment, you can't call the game easy, because you can lose everything, but you can't call it complex or diverse enough to interest hardcore, challenge-loving fans. Detail work is clearly lacking; It is immediately clear that the developers did not have high hopes for the project. But in vain!

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's Fallout Shelter for Android/iOS tablets and smartphones gives us the opportunity to try and fix the situation for civilians in a post-apocalyptic setting. We will have to carefully monitor the balance, produce food, water and energy, prevent the attacks of mutants, raiders and other unpleasant creatures of the Wasteland, a real challenge ... at first glance. But, oddly enough, one has only to succeed, as the pleasure of the game comes to naught, due to the lack of further development of the gameplay.

What can go wrong when we're put in charge of a shelter? In Fallout Shelter, early (and funniest) moments pop up around just about every challenge. The gameplay is easy to understand - new civilians are born or recruited in your hideout, you have to 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 working.

Workrooms are built instantly, you will have to wait until you earn enough caps to pay for the construction. Which is commendable, Fallout Shelter doesn't try to make you pay to speed up the process. In fact, you can't even do it.

The civilians, which are depicted in Fallout Vault Boy's signature style, are assigned to work in specific rooms, using very simple controls, they earn resources faster if the work matches the parameters (characteristics) of the civilian. Thus, you should try to match the ideal job based on the skills of the civilian in order to achieve the most ideal asylum 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 the Fallout Shelter, which we reviewed. Do you want to provide your shelter with clean drinking water or sufficient food? Can you save on other accommodation?

This is a kind of compromise game. Every time you're ready to move forward, a random raider attack, fire, or mutant cockroach invasion occurs to disrupt the perfectly planned development. The game can keep you in suspense, it makes you return to the gameplay again and again. The cute couples chat with each other before disappearing from camera view to conceive a baby, which is a very special event in the game.

Unfortunately, the more your shelter grows, the faster this thoughtful approach fades away. Fallout Shelter gets easier with development, not harder. It seems like you are playing backwards. A review of the Fallout Shelter took us to a shelter with a population of over 150, of which 25 were roaming around without a job. We no longer felt the need to optimize the operation of factories, since all resources were in abundance. The civilians are bored, there are no more quests and objectives to unlock. You can still expand the storage deeper and build a sixth power plant or a third food factory, but this will result in even more resource surplus. Have we completed the game? Or how?

Fallout Shelter is in desperate need of a set of challenges in a heavily developed phase, some sort of resource requirement needs to be created, otherwise a week of intermittent play is enough to see all the content.

All in all, the idea of ​​the game is very good, the current Fallout Shelter is like the basis for a deeper and better game that is not here yet. You don't have visuals for your hideout yet, no additional settings. There are no marketplaces to trade with other players or trade caravans. There is no need to think about the specific layout of the rooms in your hideout, no need to keep the most important buildings close to the power plant in case of an emergency. There is no need to prioritize certain products or think about a production line. Any of these features could make the game deeper and more interesting in the long run, as it happens in similar mobile games, be it FarmVille 2: Country Escape or Township.

The trade-off for this incredibly simple and unchanging gameplay loop is the availability of Fallout Shelter. 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, a gentle and unobtrusive offer to spend money. You can purchase card packs with this currency that provide a random selection of special characters, weapons, equipment, or resources, but these packs are not a necessary or mandatory solution. Pretty much every element of the gameplay sticks to old school mobile, where the main problem is waiting.

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 threatens your fragile community. Once your hideout is back on its feet, the fears are gone, and with them the fun of the game. Combine all this with the lack of long-term goals and you have an experience that is only enjoyable for the first few days, the game lacks long-term appeal.