The Sheltered

RPG Maker strikes again!

The Sheltered is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction. The generic fantasy anime fan fiction here has been replaced with a craptastic fanfiction from someone who played too much Fallout and decided it would be cool to rip off the entire game concept, only with a crappy RPG Maker adventure game instead of a crappy RPG Maker JRPG. But what should we expect from known asset flippers?

As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.

Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, generated characters, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers.

Notably the developer here couldn't work out how to use RPG Maker to make an RPG... and that's the only thing RPG Maker can do properly... except it's not even very good for making RPGs.

Benjamin Famiglietti/SA Industry have shown a repeat pattern of unethically dumping other people's work onto Steam as a cheap, nasty cash grab, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. Here's some examples so you can see for yourself:

• "Kingdom Defense" = Tower Defense Basic Pixel Art Pack developed by FreeThePlayerOnGame
  
• "Falling Words" = 2D Typing Game developed by Steelkrill Studio
  
[*] "Drive For Your Life" = Zombie Drive - Full Game Template developed by Puppeteer

Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.

It's also important to note the "developer" here has connections to a number of shady Russian asset flippers and review manipulators who show an organised pattern to scam and defraud gamers with fake reviews and asset flipping the work of others for profit. While reviews are about the games, gamers should be informed when developers act unethically. Whether these connections are the same developer using multiple accounts, or just working closely with other unethical developers, gamers should be warned about the harm to gamers by this developer and their associates. Buying games from unethical developers puts your money at risk.

[quote]Warning: Review Manipulation!

This game features a small number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product.

Due to the 2024 FTC ruling (16 CFR Part 465), these fake reviews are a violation of US Federal Law.[/quote]

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

The Sheltered has the preposterous price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger.

For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Portal 2", "Far Cry 3" or "Fallout: New Vegas". No pixelcrap is worth $5. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly.

The Sheltered — очень увлекательная игра о выживании в постапокалиптическом мире. Интересный геймплей, отличная атмосфера и возможность стратегического планирования. Рекомендую!

Just another RPG game that you should probably avoid.

The game has a good premise but there is only one place where you can save your game. Because of that, half an hour of going back and forth can be wasted. Play if you are VERY patient.

Its genuinely a well made game with an interesting storyline and good gameplay, however the Blue cave maze sucks and it took me 3 hours to get out. I had to draw the entire map and take dozens of screenshots and then slowly piece them together in photoshop in order to figure out how to get through.

It was waaaay too much effort for almost no reward.

Apart from the awful blue cave maze I enjoyed the experience.

EDIT - SCRATCH THAT- after I finally got out of the cave I accidently hit F12, and the game immediately closed and I lost 3 hours of progress in that damn maze.

This game could really use a guide, try as I might I couldnt figure out how to gather more than 3 Fodder, 4 Water and 3 Food for the shelter.

this game so dizzy!

The Sheltered is a game that delivers on the amount effort that you put into it. You can literally complete the game in under 10 minutes, and feel like you threw your money away, or you could attempt to find everything and save everyone, which ends up delivering some surprises and a lot of satisfaction. For me, I thought that this has actually been the most underrated title I've played thusfar. I really enjoyed the mood, the dialogue, the puzzles, and exploration required to really get the most out of the game.

With that being said, it isn't perfect and it won't appeal to everybody. There is only one save point, which can cause a lot of frustration as you have to replay or backtrack when you die or want to save. There isn't a lot of direction, which appealled to me, but can really put some gamers off. There is not a lot of action or constant activity to really keep you enthralled second-to-second. So, if you are looking for an action-packed title that doesn't necessarily require a lot of thought, then this really is not going to be your game. However, I'd recommend it to anybody else who is curious about the game, if only for the fact that it is $2 (without being on sale) so, even if you don't happen to like it, you won't have spent more than you would have for a soda anyways.

Awful game. Way too short. Not even worth £1.59 in my opinion.

I'll be honest, I like many aspects of this game. I love the atmosphere it creates and the story it's trying to tell. The reason I don't reccomend this game is because it struggles a lot with basic things- the controls are clunky, combat is difficult (although the aspect of only having a few bullets is interesting), and saving your game requires trekking all the way back to your bunker. Bottom line, this game is supposed to be about making hard choices and saving people; yet it seems you can't even make the choice until you've explored everywhere and completed every challenge- neither of which are easy to do because of the less-than-smooth controls. This game has a lot of potential and I would definitely play a revised edition or a sequel, but unfortunately there are too many issues with the mechanics of the game for me to reccomend it right now.

pretty okay game but mb just drop and it says i gotta wait 30 days to comeback out then does some credits tells me who made what who tested game do i really need to wait 30 days in real life or what or is this game not even finish

Extremely amateurish. Starts with the "plot" of a thief whom you caught red handed stealing from you; you have a gun, he's cornered in a dead end, but the script pauses so he can run away unscathed because fuck logic. Then all people you could offer shelter to line up neatly and present themselves, and they each have something like 3 lines. The obnoxious thief is among them. Oh yeah, each person sheltered requires extra food and water, but guess who's expected to go risk life and limb fetching it while they chill in the hall?

If it hasn't become obvious by this point, the writing is fucking terrible. There isn't a natural sounding conversation in the game, nothing makes sense. The characters have zero personality; to say they are unidimensional would be giving too much credit to the barely existent characterization they get.

The gameplay isn't even worth talking about. This is an RPG Maker game that would sail or sink on the strength of its story, which is terrible.

It all comes down too your choices, plain and simple. Will you take in the son and leave the father too die, will you accept the help of a man who offers to 'get rid' of a few undesirable folks staying in the town in exchange for Shelter, or in the end will you give your on life so that just one other soul is given the chance to survive? The choices are yours to make, explore, solves puzzles and prepare to make moral decisions that will have you questioning your humanity.

My first and last "RPGMaker" game. I see that there are a lot of these "RPGMaker" games ... seems some people enjoy them, which is fine, but I'm not one of them. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885608348 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885608821

Probabily one of the best games i have ever played on Steam, honestly. The story is really good, the graphics are simple and the controls are pretty easy. It's a must buy.

The Sheltered is a game that will frustrate you sometimes, but this is good. The puzzles are interesting, some take some time and if your not slick with your arrow keys, you'll soon find yourself reloading. I recommend this game because it forces you to make decisions in the end about who you will save (if you want) and who will die.

There is one thing I wish I could've seen more of and that is the end result of what happened after with the people I choose to save. I even imagined the game continuing after the bomb drops, being forced to use the skills and characteristics of those you saved, including the cons to that. Perhaps someone betrays you afterwards or causes problems with someone else while in the shelter.

The game is worth the 2 bucks.

This game showed so much promise. It had a terrific premise, and a pretty decent plot to go with it. Gameplay mechanics were relatively sound and I would have enjoyed it.

WOULD HAVE being the main point in that sentence. The game has a striking lack of save points and when I say lack of, I mean that there's just ONE save point. ONE.

Generally, a lack of save points doesn't condemn a game to being unplayable. However, when faced with events like the Gauntlet, where multiple deaths are unavoidable, this becomes a major problem. Particularly when the Gauntlet is obviously meant to be a trial-and-error point of the game, meaning you are MEANT to die. The only save point in the game is a good 1-2 minute journey from the Gauntlet.

TL:DR, if you don't enjoy leaving running back and forth between a save point and an almost inevitable death multiple times, don't get this game. I finished it once and I don't intend on playing it again.

It's too short, but I enjoed this 2 hours of playing.

My soul is now blackened.

Before reviewing this game, its worth saying that I didn't play it in its entirety. I found myself abandoning it rather early on for one simle reason, and that is its save points - or rather, lack thereof.

Theres one save point in this game. One. While this might not seem like so much of a problem at first, since its easy to duck the basic infected enemies, when you come up against regular deaths such as The Gauntlet boss, this makes you want to tear out your hair. Being of an old school RPG style, you don't exactly wander around the map at high speed (seriously dude, do some cardio - jog once in a while!), and so it takes a while to get back to your regular death spot where you'll have to destory your spacebar tapping through all of the text speech (AGAIN) to make limited progress before dying once more.

Besides this frustrating cycle, the game showed a lot of promise. The moral decisions looked interesting and - while i was regularly walking back and forth to that b*st*rds lair and dying - I found myself seriously considering who to save and who to leave behind. I also really loved the music, which added intensity to the action scenes and avoided becoming an annoying background loop.

However overall, I found the gameplay just much too fidgety and frustrating. When I took a break and tried to follow a different path, I found myself lost in a system of caves which (after the gauntlet ordeal) I hadn't the patience to traverse.

Perhaps this is all down to personal preference. Maybe if youre a fan of this genre then you'll find the game wonderful, but this was not the case for me and so I wouldn't recommend it.

So far, so good for a simple old school RPG style game...

I also like the theme and plot, even though it's not exactly original.

Here's a link to my first 20 minutes or so in the game, it should give you a good idea of what to expect without spoiling anything for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fzw4J61EPc

I need to finish this game before being able to score it fairly, but so far, i'd say it looks like it's well worth it's asking price!

Two Thumbs Up... and a full fledged review coming soon...