Sheltered 2 has just launched for PC, and it’s a pretty great sequel to the original game. In that first game, you had to carefully balance the survivors in your shelter, who all needed to be fed, cleaned, and watered to stay alive, with going ou into the world and scavenging to survive. The sequel adds a level of automation that ensures you’re not too bogged down in managing your survivors, but it also gives you a lot more to do outside of that. I’ve been playing the game for a little while, and I think it’s got legs, but it’s very different to the original in a lot of ways.
I fondly remember hitting the point in Sheltered at which I’d build every room and was working on the best equipment possible. I had enough water and food, and all I was sending people out into the world for were the incredibly rare collectible items. While I still lost a few to raids and random encounters, I had the sort of set up that meant that nothing too bad could happen to my shelter. However, I still remember it being stressful to run.
Sheltered 2 feels incredibly stressful all the time. It feels like you need to be managing your survivors all the time, and going out on expeditions is now a lot more dangerous. The world is filled with factions, which makes it far more difficult to explore anywhere. If you want to enter new territory, you need to befriend a faction, and that requires you to complete jobs for them. This turns the game into a Walking Dead simulator, with factions vying for space all around you. It’s interesting, and fits well once you get used to it, but it’s very jarring if you’re coming at this game after the original.
For newcomers, I can see a lot of barriers to entry in Sheltered 2. It’s a base management game that’s got a lot for you to consider. For example, if you don’t keep on top of cleanliness and repairs, you’re going to kill everyone very quickly. However, like Dark Souls, this is a process of learning through making mistakes, and ultimately it’s quite good.
