Shelter
Developed by Might and Delight for Windows and Mac, Shelter is a survival video game where the players control a mother badger. Players have to tend and feed their badger cubs whilst travelling from burrow to burrow. Dangers exist in the wilderness with birds of prey and wildfires existing as threats. In addition, new environments are provided to give extra challenges and dangers for the players to avoid.
Impressively, Shelter combines the worlds of beautifully drawn art with the true core of a survival game. Breaking down the genre to its bare bones, Shelter illustrates the more direct physical nature of an open world and the natural threats to life.
Shelter gives animal games a unique viewpoint through its melodic soundtrack and the true merciless environment of the planet we live in. The ideology isn’t complex, the gameplay is straightforward and this results in an organic release that strips everything back in the world of survival to the basics.
It seems interesting that idea of an animal-oriented survival game can be classified as unique due to its simplistic concept and gameplay. However, Shelter excels in representing the basic nature of animals and their constant fight to remain alive and to protect their own. When birds of prey swoop to capture your small badger cubs, you feel the emotion and the fear animals have each day.
Shelter keeps players in the same world they all know, but from the eyes of something so small and apparently insignificant. Bringing this to life has been done in a beautiful and compelling way.
Shelter 2 has just been released and can be found on Steam.
