Fallout Shelter

 iOS
User Score
6.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 219 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 107 out of 219
  2. Mixed: 65 out of 219
  3. Negative: 47 out of 219
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  1. logfromblammo
    Aug 23, 2015
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. When I first saw it, I was elated to see the Fallout franchise come to mobile.

    But then I played it, on both Android and on iOS. None of the elements that made me love Fallout are present in Fallout Shelter. This game embodies everything that is wrong with mobile gaming.

    The essence of gameplay is tap and wait. The pay-to-win elements will allow you to tap automatically or wait less between taps. As such, it is much like every other mobile single-player freemium game. First, you take a simple resource management game, then you find a way to make it less fun. Then you add paid elements to temporarily remove the mechanisms that make it less fun.

    Even if you pay to remove the anti-fun, the maximum amount of fun is still very low. There is no plot. There are no quests. There are only the same four negative random events that can largely be mitigated by just two simple strategic practices: build in a checkerboard pattern, and keep six strong, heavily-armed vault guards on duty in the power station adjacent to the door on the entry level.

    I want to assemble a party of Vault Dweller, Chosen One, Brotherhood Warrior, Lone Wanderer, and Courier Six, crack open this vault, and teach the inhabitants how to actually have fun in the Wasteland. I'm disappointed, Bethesda, very disappointed.    … Expand
  2. Doc_Sci-Fi
    Aug 14, 2015
    1
    I was quite enthusiastic at first, but the game have rapidly disappointed me: there is no aim, feels like farming resources restlessly, the rhythm is too slow, making new dwellers takes literally 6 hours, your people die while you are not in the game. "Wasting time" resumes it perfectly. The only good thing is the nice interface, but it is not enough to convince me. Paying for bonus areI was quite enthusiastic at first, but the game have rapidly disappointed me: there is no aim, feels like farming resources restlessly, the rhythm is too slow, making new dwellers takes literally 6 hours, your people die while you are not in the game. "Wasting time" resumes it perfectly. The only good thing is the nice interface, but it is not enough to convince me. Paying for bonus are not even worthy.

    They have everything to make a good game but they are obviously lazy. What a shame!    … Expand
  3. game_over
    Jun 27, 2015
    0
    The game goes from "This is the best mobile game ever made." to "WTF. This sucks" over time.

    No pause button Guys dying when you are offline unless you conform your real life schedule to the game Later stages of the game are annoying e.g., Rad Roaches spawning in multiple rooms , attacking in waves , and killing entire rooms full of dwellers. Poor controls being annoying early    The game goes from "This is the best mobile game ever made." to "WTF. This sucks" over time.

    No pause button

    Guys dying when you are offline unless you conform your real life schedule to the game

    Later stages of the game are annoying e.g., Rad Roaches spawning in multiple rooms , attacking in waves , and killing entire rooms full of dwellers.

    Poor controls being annoying early on, become game breaking later during Rad Roach attacks.

    Other Bethesda games e.g., Fallout 3 and Skyrim, start out fun and become more enjoyable as you play them. This game starts out fun and then starts to suck big time. No thanks. Uninstall. Do game players have a lower standard for fun gameplay for mobile apps?    … Expand
  4. nalomeli
    Jul 3, 2015
    0
    This game is only fun at first. Eventually as your game gets more complicated interface issues become more and more pronounced and you end up wasting all of your time trying to complete simple tasks while your resources drain. Its the most frustrating game play experience I've ever had and I feel stupid for having wasted my time.
  5. LeftZer0
    Sep 3, 2015
    3
    The controls in this game are bad. Really bad. Insanely bad. Seriously, they're terrible, horrible. Even if all the rest were perfect, the controls are reason enough to cap this game's score at 5. I saw myself time after time having to try multiple times to select a dweller, or selecting one and sending him to another room when I wanted to move the camera. Selecting them to heal or applyThe controls in this game are bad. Really bad. Insanely bad. Seriously, they're terrible, horrible. Even if all the rest were perfect, the controls are reason enough to cap this game's score at 5. I saw myself time after time having to try multiple times to select a dweller, or selecting one and sending him to another room when I wanted to move the camera. Selecting them to heal or apply radaway is the same annoyance. The controls are already bad at the start, when the Vault starts to grow they turn the game into chaos. Everything has to be microed, you can't auto-assign dwellers, you can't auto-fill rooms, the UI for both things suck and you'll be soon with 50+ dwellers having to deal with that with every single one. And if they die in a room and you pay to revive them you have to reassign them to that room - result, I just uninstalled the game after a Deathclaw attack killed 10 of my dwellers and demanded me to throw them around until everyone's back at their right room. No, thank you.

    The pace of the game, even when everything is going well, is too slow. As a mobile game, the idea that you can stop playing at any time and come back later to see things finished exist, but to gather caps (the currency) you still have to be clicking things, so from time to time your gameplay consists of looking at the screen and clicking at the green things that appear - and it's still extremely slow.

    The resource management is a pain in the ass, there is no way to instantly know if you have enough of one of the resources or if with the new expansion you will run out, and when you find out you're not producing enough it's too late and your dwellers are suffering from the lack of it, which leads to unhappiness, which leads to less production, which leads to less of the resource you need - WHO THOUGH THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

    Lastly, the game still consumes your resources for some time after being "closed", so it's not rare to leave my vault with everything perfectly fine and return to a slight lack of food or water, which made my happiness go from 90% to 10%.

    About the rest: graphics OK, sound/OST are nice, the ideas are good, no issues with glitches, bugs or crashes.

    Overall, decent (but generic) concept, exceedingly bad controls, bad execution. With some more thought and much better controls could be a decent game on PC, where we do have enough space for a decent UI to manage hundreds of dwellers. But as a mobile game, it's trash - just wait for Fallout 4.    … Expand
  6. dkaizer
    Aug 20, 2015
    4
    I gave this game a relatively low score because of one reason; **** MOLE RATS. THEY SPREAD TOO DAMN FAST! Within a matter of seconds they have spread from one room to three to four rooms. Where is the fairness in that??? Don't waste your time playing this game because **** mole rats will just overwhelm you and waste five days of effort.
  7. DapperDanMan
    Aug 14, 2015
    0
    Game was fun until the update. Right after the update my vault went on the fritz. I got into my vault one time and watched all of my resources drain right after the update. My Vault Residents health status dropped across the board and my production rooms ceased their intended purposes...production! Enter DEATHCLAWS! This all happened within 20 minutes. Three deathclaws attacked my vault. IGame was fun until the update. Right after the update my vault went on the fritz. I got into my vault one time and watched all of my resources drain right after the update. My Vault Residents health status dropped across the board and my production rooms ceased their intended purposes...production! Enter DEATHCLAWS! This all happened within 20 minutes. Three deathclaws attacked my vault. I had 177 residents at the time of the attack. I have 75 residents left. You read that right. The deathclaws took out 102 residents. I liked the game as a 10-15 minute time-suck. Also I purchased one of the lunchbox packages (one of the cheaper ones) against my better judgement. The items you get can be taken from you throughout the game. Example, you get a card for 500 caps, raiders come and take caps (after update). You pay Bethesda (?) for stuff. They give stuff. They take stuff back after giving stuff.… Expand
  8. colacastell
    Jun 19, 2015
    0
    Can not enjoy the title as it appears to be completely pay-to-win. I now have played two individual vaults, and after a time everything simply falls apart, even though you are doing everything as good as possible. That means you end up needing to buy these boxes for real money in order to sustain a healthy vault.
    I had a totally fine population and had all facilities balanced and    Can not enjoy the title as it appears to be completely pay-to-win. I now have played two individual vaults, and after a time everything simply falls apart, even though you are doing everything as good as possible. That means you end up needing to buy these boxes for real money in order to sustain a healthy vault.
    I had a totally fine population and had all facilities balanced and completely filled with the best workers according to their S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills, meaning all the strongest to the generator and so on. At the same time I was smartly using the speed boosts, which always bring the risk of an accident, but I was able to avoid many and only used boost with low risk when available. Also, I had many inhabitants reproduce so that I was able to grow, get more resources and eventually more things to build, while keeping everything afloat (all resources in green area).
    At some point everyone was working, every facility I had was fully upgraded and I used boost. However, resources went away, and I was already doing everything I could. I had everyone working, again, everything upgraded to the maximum, and I could not stop the trend. After a time everything was almost on zero, and I could not do anything to avoid it, which leads me to the assumption that even though you plan as good as possible, your population is not able to provide itself in the long term. Which means you have to pay and get these boxes so you can play. That is just a completely bad approach and disrespectful for anyone wanting to play the game. That results in 1 point.    … Expand
  9. janlopes
    Aug 19, 2015
    4
    I can't handle freemium anymore! After 4 hours your vault is destroyed and it is impossible to rebuild it without spending a lot of money. Charge me 15 bucks for a full game!!! Stop making money machines!!!
  10. NeoMorph
    Jun 17, 2015
    3
    It's an addictive game WHEN IT WORKS... When it doesn't it's a pile of doggy doodoo. They should make it clear it isn't supposed to run on older hardware like my iPad 2 or iPhone 4s.
  11. nomadys
    Oct 28, 2015
    1
    I had great fun in the beginning, spent hours and hours building up my second vault (which I gave up as it didn't go too well). But the time I built my second vault, I was experienced enough to avoid my previous mistakes, and gathered a lot of tips on the Internet. I even spent good in-app money for goodies, something I usually don't do. Then, after about 10 days of playing (-not always ofI had great fun in the beginning, spent hours and hours building up my second vault (which I gave up as it didn't go too well). But the time I built my second vault, I was experienced enough to avoid my previous mistakes, and gathered a lot of tips on the Internet. I even spent good in-app money for goodies, something I usually don't do. Then, after about 10 days of playing (-not always of course), everything went down the gutter when my dwellers were attacked by mole rats, killing about 60 of my 66 dwellers, despite all of them being armed. Heavily frustrated for loosing hours of build-up game-play, I gave up this vault, and built a third one. Then it happened again, IMHO a serious conceptual flaw in this game. I can't express how much it sucked to loose everything again a second time. Uninstalling it, no regrets! Don't even bother downloading it, you'll regret it later.… Expand
  12. Lee_Bale
    Dec 25, 2018
    2
    The game becomes VERY boring after you reach about 50 dwellers. I deleted and re-installed it three times because I always got bored after a while, decided to give it another chance and then got bored again. You gain lunchboxes and new items way too slowly, so the gameplay consists mainly of waiting and fighting molerats, raiders or radroaches over and over again. It is also difficult toThe game becomes VERY boring after you reach about 50 dwellers. I deleted and re-installed it three times because I always got bored after a while, decided to give it another chance and then got bored again. You gain lunchboxes and new items way too slowly, so the gameplay consists mainly of waiting and fighting molerats, raiders or radroaches over and over again. It is also difficult to micro-manage all the dwellers and move them across the vault. It's just a waste of time.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

1
#1 Most Discussed iOS Game of 2015
56
#56 Most Shared iOS Game of 2015

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
71

Mixed or average reviews - based on 39 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 39
  3. Negative: 1 out of 39
  1. Pelit (Finland)
    Sep 1, 2015
    85
    Fallout Shelter is a decent free-to-play title, as it never begs for money and you can play it relatively easily without spending a dime. It's also a prime example of marketing. By releasing the game just after the announcement of Fallout 4, Bethesda made an excellent example of capitalizing the IP. [Aug 2015]
  2. Attack of the Fanboy
    Aug 23, 2015
    70
    Fallout Shelter is an enjoyable but ultimately shallow experience. It’s set apart from others of its ilk by making its transactions truly and completely optional — though sorely tempting.
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  3. TheAppzine
    Aug 20, 2015
    70
    Thankfully, Fallout Shelter's nostalgic aesthetics (which imitate signs and other written materials seen in Fallout 3 and New Vegas) mostly outshine the issues of the game's shallow nature.
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