Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 10:23 am
Sheltered – Strategy Game Review
Sheltered is a Strategy game from Team17 Digital Limited, first launched in 25th October 2017.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 352+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Sheltered Stand Out
Sheltered is a post-apocalyptic disaster management game that gives a whole new meaning to the term “nuclear family”. Given a head-start over the billions lost in a nuclear holocaust, you must gather as many supplies as possible en route to the concrete underground shelter that will soon become your family home for the foreseeable dire future.
As the overwhelming despair of this new world surrounds you, how will you survive? Your approach to the countless moral choices you’ll be faced with on a daily basis, could be the difference between the lives of your family or their unfortunate end. Resources are scarce though, with barely enough to cling desperately to life for another day you’re already faced with a monumental choice. Who will you send to venture out into the vast unforgiving wasteland? Whilst exploration is a traumatic experience, the weapons you can craft from resources could tip the scales of life or death in your favour. Assaults from feral beasts and roaming factions are endlessly closing in, imminent and deadly risks surround you.
‘Violence is never the answer’… Maybe you once believed that, but combat may now be your only option for survival. As you and your family grow and progress, so do their skills, attributes and weaknesses. Ensure that they’re well equipped as you strategize, securing victory against those who threaten the survival of your family in tense turn based combat.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Sheltered is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 25th October 2017
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
Download & Availability
Sheltered is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Hey developer very great game just wanted to say hope theres updates and new things coming soon been playing for 3 years now.
This is a game that has been out for a while, and because of that, it comes with no ads, micro-transactions, or anything that makes the game easier. It makes the game purely skill-based, which is something we strive to look for. These older games were made before the wave of the ads came in, and thats why we strongly suggest this game rather than other more modern games of similar style.
Sooooo whens sheltered 2 coming on mobile we have tons of hours on steam already just waiting for it to come out on here.
Hello, Ive been playing this game for weeks, awesome time killer and we enjoy doing different runs with characters, our only wish is that there would be at least one last update to add an auto fix mechanic to have a shelter member run repairs in between caring for their food and water etc. Needs, other than that this game is phenomenal. Big thanks to the devs for this one.
No matter how many apps we try, we always come back to Sheltered. The pessimism of pushing to survive in a hopeless world is our JAM man. That said! Devs! Id love for there to be a way to amp up difficulty once the game begins. Like, maybe with every new shelter you start, one of the adjustable settings shifts. We think it would add a lot more fun to the late game! Please take this into consideration, we love this app to bits.
Thoroughly enjoyed playing through this gem of a game. Ive bought it for PlayStation as well as smartphone. Even purchased it for pc. What we noticed on pc is that the pc variant actually receives updates whereas PS4 and smartphone do not seem to have the added content and scenarios. Why? Please keep adding content.
The game is super fun and engaging, also could be somewhat challenging at first, requires you to learn it on your own, as the in-game tutorial is short and covers very little. So play carefully, attentively and plan your actions in advance, as there are some randomness in events. But, when you learn its specifics, it becomes very entertaining and with quite a few fun turns. Minor issue: in general storage view, its UI scroll element is missing and not working (iPone7plus).
We were playing this about a month ago and everything was working well. The save gear icon was in the upper left corner on our iPhone X. We picked the game up again today, moved to the second map, and now there is a display for characters status in the upper left, covering the gear icon. We cannot save any progress! Please fix! Thanks [update-shortly after our review complaining of a save problem, the game has been fixed! Dunno if it was in response to our specific review, but great responsiveness to addressing issues either way!].
Personally, we think this game is great. Although it gets a little boring after around 300 days, its a very fun and addicting game. There are a lot of 8 year olds in the comments/reviews saying oH mY uNcLe mAdE cAll oF dUtY aNd tHiS iS tRaSh but for anyone with an IQ above room temperature, this is a pretty fun game. Now, this game is also pretty hard. Ive had at least two families die because we couldnt find a freaking hinge to make a freezer to harvest a deer, but overall its a great game.
The game is good but they should add a sandbox mode which means that you wont need items to craft,upgrade or need food,water and gas.
We started playing this game at 9:47 pm on a Friday and once we looked up from our tablet, the sun was pouring through our windows.
Please add season circle in to the game and more stuff.
We have effortlessly put over 40 hours into this game, with less friction than many big RPG titles. The gameplay is addictive and has such a huge variety of things to do, it just clicks perfectly with us. Its very buggy, but no major catastrophes happened. There were more than a few hilarious surprises in store for us. Lets just say, be sure your new recruits get out of the vault every once in a while! You dont want them to get too stir crazy. We will say that once you get pretty stabilized and into a rhythm the game starts to get a bit tedious, because truly there is no ultimate goal other than to survive as long as you can. Once you get past day 200 or 250 youll probably get bored, but it takes quite a while to get to that point and we think the cost of this game is more than worth the many hours of entertainment it provides. The only caution we would give is that it can be pretty difficult at the beginning to get your shelter established. Be sure to focus on collecting water as much as you can in the beginning, and realize that you need to be pretty much constantly sending people out to gather supplies at the start. There are many excellent guides online to help you out if need be. Have fun.
Huge bug. When ever we return to shelter with supplies, food disappears from our scavage, any help how to fix this MAJOR issue? Otherwise fantastic.
This is fun! But one question: have you added Stasis and Surrounded mode.
We love this game because of the balance of food and water and how there is stress and trauma and you can really feel you are in a post-apocalyptic world. But, there are problems with some game mechanics. For example, after playing this for a month or two we still cant figure out how to build a third floor (help us please). Overall, great game but needs fixes and a few more craft-able items to add variety.
This game reminds us a lot like this war of ours. Its really good. Also we swear we do feel bad when the pets died and we have to use it for food.
Is such a great game and so fun to play. Its addicting and a great experience but one downside is that there are a lot of commands and things to learn on how to play the game and the tutorial doesnt cover much on all the ways to play the game.
This game is great our favourite mobile game we have ever played. Now yes the price does bother us but we understand that they have to make money and with no in app-purchases makes it all skill based which we love. Our one issue is that showers sometimes glitch and they wont take one we usually have to reset the day by backing out of the game and refreshing. Everything else is great and hope that they keep up the great work.
Great game in every way, would gladly pay more for games like these. Only bug Ive found has to do with storage. There is no down arrow to look thru the inventory. Im also not able to rearrange our inventory in the storage. Im only up to the small crate and hoping this self fixes with the medium crate.
Ive reset our phone and tried about 10 times and it keeps stoping at the same percent but when we go to the App Store it says it has not downloaded at ALL.
The game is really fun and we were starting to get the hang of it until we sent out two of our family members on a mission. At that point the game glitches and the other member didnt leave and just stood there, and we wasnt able to use him. We thought we were fine but after 10 days no response from our other member so we just kept fast forwarding until we came to the conclusion that they were lost for good. So please fix this.
We like the aspect of balancing water consumption, food regulation, as well as keeping machines functioning and upgrading them. It is however rather difficult to completely understand all of the aspects such as the purpose of some items as well as how certain stats such as charisma affect the game (although it is fairly obvious). You have to make decisions on what to take and what to leave, make the most out of a gas mask and keep each person happy. You may need to watch a video or two, maybe read a guide to an item you dont get. Additionally, reading each item for an idea instead of having a tutorial to outline the basics is difficult. Otherwise, the game is very solid and is comparable to this war of ours or fallout shelter.
You guys should add more Items and weapons into the game like a katana.
We like this game quite a bit, but we feel that it is too difficult. It took us a long time to discover how to use things and we still don't think we're doing things right. We were really confused and we think there should be a more thorough tutorial. We also happen to always die of starvation since it is so difficult to find food. Not to mention that all of the pets die quickly since we don't have enough rations to share. Even on easy, rain is sometimes rare and we can't go and explore so we can solve the issue on starvation. Good game, but we think it should be a bit easier on easy.
Since we bought this game on Steam we knew we need it in our new iPad Pro to play everywhere. So when we saw Sheltered on our iPad AppStore we were so excited to play it on our way to the office or school. Love this game.
Its just great it has A great atmosphere and its just also great game we have multiple suggestions like creative cakewalk mode which is basically an easier then easy.
Great game and love the mechanics just wish our fingers didnt have to clog the screen.
We love this game, but It needs updates!! We recently started playing on PC, and we like that version because it gives you a trash bin outside incase you cant fit everything in your shelter. Why doesnt mobile have anything like that, or at lest give us the option to make a bin. We need more things to do and make! How about being able to raid other shelters and not just be raided. The kids should be able to grow up and have kids of there own so were not just taking in random people. Mobile gamers need updates to not just PC.
Great foundation for a game. Seems impossibly difficult in harder modes but you can eventually turn a corner where the game gets easy on any difficulty level. While we could still see ourselves enjoy8mg the game, without updates, there is nothing new to discover.
It could be more fair its like everyone dies in your family why couldnt u make were the kids grow up and have babys we mean it make sense.
We love the game but maybe add more to do after you upgrade everything and make it take the full screen on the 11pro max and below because it uses 3/4 of our screen so its hard to play.
We didnt have a problem with this before but now all of a sudden our game keeps crashing, please fix.
Its a good game but sometimes some of the objects like the shower bugs out and the game thinks that its being used when its not, other than that great game.
This is a GREAT game that can be even greater.
If you acknowledged Fallout Shelter was an absurd cash grab with micro-transactions and artificially bloated wait times, Sheltered is the game you actually wanted. Its super fun, with a high learning curve. Things that could make the game better: -Have a mechanism for quickly setting the number for how many items you want to move from one menu box to another. When it gets to high-volume trades, moving 50 items one-by-one gets irritating. -Add an automatic maintenance bot. Once you have all the tools and 5+ shelter inhabitants, the fear of something breaking down are more of an inconvenience than an actual threat to the shelter. At that stage, it makes sense to offload the responsibility to a bot, so the player can concentrate on missions. -Add a higher-stakes plot that the player can engage in once theyre locked and loaded with the best stuff. The current Yay! You can start over! Is kind of lame. -Force the player to take the offensive once the defensive measures are adequate for steamrolling would-be raiders. -we got the impression from some of the character designs that people and creatures were mutating over time… Which would be totally awesome if that was actually the case.
The game is cool. Its somewhat more realistic than your average post-apocalyptic survival game. You dont just pay $2 and get a shipment of gear, and your inhabitants dont exactly take care of themselves. Even on easy mode, the game is ridiculously challenging, you have to send people out all the time, otherwise, your shelter is going to be a mess of bodies lying in their own filth and waiting for sweet departure. The game is honestly hard up to a fault. We (personally)cant have fun unless we look online for guides. We wouldnt recommend this to a casual gamer, or someone looking to have something like animal crossing that is just an escapist task you do every day. If you arent up for the challenge, be warned.
Please make it possible for feeding the pet an automatic action. Also please add are you sure you want to _? Buttons, those are actually really convenient. Ive been struggling for food and someone who could have had food came to our shelter to trade. We hit no by accident and couldnt go back. We also hit no when we were asked to take a look at some items at a house.
This would be an absolutely fantastic game if you guys updated it regularly.
The game seems fun, but the black frame around the screen is pretty annoying. It would be awesome if the game supported it.
This game is fun! We enjoy playing it, even though it doesnt make sense. And it DOES NOT make sense. Heres a list of how: 1. Why cant we pre-arm and line up our shelter dwellers when an attacker is incoming? Why do we only get to use one character at a time, even if we have a whole group of people and a whole arsenal of weapons? Also, once that character gets hurt, why cant we switch to another character to fight the next invader? Why must we use up our people until they die? 2. Why is it that our shelter dwellers can get smarter from reading the same book over and over again, and create a recycling center out of raw materials, but cant craft their own springs, hinges, pipes, etc? 3. Since most combat takes place on missions, why cant we use adrenaline during those fights? 4. Why does the pet cat starve to death even though its killing rats, unless you have a freezer, in which case the rats are deposited into the freezer, and you can feed the cat rat meat from the freezer that the cat has caught originally? Like, why cant Guybrush (our shelter cat) eat his own rats as he catches them? (Same with the snake. Why does the snake starve to death even though its killing rats?) 5. Why are there no store-bought antiemetics in this world, even though there are lots of other drugs? 6. Edited to add: when we take our family to a new shelter, there is an icon in the upper left corner showing their stats. This icon covers he pause/ save icon, so we now cant access the pause/save function. Can you fix this.
This is a very good game with great replay ability value. Our only complaint is that the combat is too easy and theres almost zero strategy involved. If they expanded on the combat part of the game even a little bit, the game would be a five star game for us.
Awesome, lots of fun, addicting, but buggy as hell. We forgot to upgrade our air filter and people were suffocating; one woman ran to the surface where… She just stands there. We cant tell her what to do, she wont move an inch… Also, we got the warning that raiders would attack us soon; two weeks later: no raiders and we still cant send people into the wasteland or craft things or recycle things or even access anyone. Its a complete standstill. What. The. Crapola.
Honestly, this game is amazing. We play it a lot, and from the time we have played it, we have to report some glitches. We hope you take these into consideration. 1. We usually play and just close out of the game and we go back on and it usually works. But sometimes it reset the game, and thats fine but when we… Lets say we Set up and exposition and we close the game and it resets, sometimes it doesnt save so Im back to make it again. It honestly not a big deal, but try to fix it. 2. This one is a little annoying, so we built a luxury shower and it had been used for a while. But once it has been used for a while, it doesnt give the option to take a shower, its like it didnt even exist, this happened everytime we deconstructed and built it. This happened to a few other thing but this is the one that happened most often 3. This one caused us to delete one of our games that had 200+ Days. So when we do the close game and re open it while its on an expedition (This usually only happens when we take the camper van) we close the game, it resets and we open the game file, then we came up to the exposition not even there anymore, it says on the map there is a expedition, but the green marker is at the shelter, and you cant see the path you made, you can still recall it, but no one will come back. It is very annoying. If you hope you guys take the time to read our post. It might have some writing error since we were in a hurry. We thank you for making such an amazing game, and take the time and effort to make it better Sincerely, Lucas.
The game plays fairly well, but seems too busy at times. The controls dont always work well – we couldnt bury a pet because the option showed once and then wouldnt show again. The words mention recycling parts, but no item to do so. Ive been playing easy mode for a while now. Cant get beyond day 15 without all or most players starving. If theres a steady supply of food somewhere, we havent found it. There are plenty of resources, but not food., plenty of traders, but not food, etc. We like the concept. Balancing player traits doesnt amount to much without a food supply. * Seems only fair to say that we did get past day 15. We need water to go places, traps if we get stuck at home. But harvesting needs a freezer, that we cant build without parts, etc. Get the parts by using the radio to bring traders, etc. The only drawback now seems that the game seems to go on forever, and eleven people in a shelter at once seems too much to manage. But if we dismiss recruits they wil damage our stuff, etc. The interfaces overlap so that people and items block each other. *** Some parts of this game are not player friendly. Players stand in front of each other, so we cant just tap them. On the trail, and at the shelter, players ask to join but the game doesnt check to see if the shelter is already at max. So if we say yes, players suffocate. But if we say no at the shelter recruits damage our stuff. Likewise, if we dismiss a weak player to get a strong player, the player dismissed damages our stuff. When we open storage, the scroll fearure doesnt work, so we cant see all our stored items. A constant need to accept transmissions from expeditions is just a waste of time; adds simply nothing to the game.
Downloaded it yesterday and already have 10+ hours into it. Only problem is one of the members of our shelter died in bed, however, we couldnt remove the corpse. So we had the bed deconstructed and the body disappeared. Only problem is the rest of the members of the shelter are complaining about the corpse. This is the only bug Ive encountered so far. Overall a great game.
The game is great so far, but we have to give it four stars at the moment because of two things. First, we wish the zoom was more fluid. We can zoom in and out only by a single tick. Id love to be able to frame the screen view to the depth we want; like Fallout Shelter. Second, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE and iPhoneX compatibility.
Like the game and will keep playing but whyyyy do we have to do things like feed the dog and make residents go to the toilet? There should be a setting that automates that. (Maybe there is. We are a new player).
We would give it a 5 star but how the gas mask is a one time use is dumb in it self. But how you cant craft them IS WORSE! How we are suppose to go out on expedtions?! If we send them out with no mask theyll die?! We really think this should be changed Thank you.
Game always, we mean always lag at the start of the day if you fast forward it. Every day without a doubt it lags cannot stop . Sometimes we miss the traders or broadcast.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0
- Size: 402.38 MB
- iOS: 10.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, PT, RU, ZH, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor
- Developer: Team17 Digital Limited
Last updated: 25th October 2017 | Genre: Strategy | Developer: Team17 Digital Limited