(⚠️ Spoiler-free zone) Background
Might and Delight's 2013 game Shelter, now sometimes retroactively referred to as Shelter 1, was a little sensation of a game when it first came out. It may feel easy to dismiss it as "another stylized indie game about animals" today, but on its release over a decade ago Shelter was all sorts of refreshing. Suffice to say it turned heads, my own included, and I recall personally being excited to one day play it myself.
Shelter is a short, linear experience lasting about two hours. You play as a mother badger, protecting and guiding her cubs in a world of flat-shaded textured papercraft. That's about as much as I can say while still claiming "spoiler-free." Beyond this point the spoilers will be light and shouldn't impact the experience or give away too much, if you'd like to keep on reading.
(⚠️ Light spoilers from this point on!) The basics
Shelter benefits from your undivided attention: full screen, headphones on, and no distractions. The acoustic-heavy soundtrack by Retro Family and the heavily stylized visuals lend themselves to a folktale storybook atmosphere.
As a package, Shelter has no waste, no extraneous elements. The primary attraction is the main story, simply titled "Shelter," with an additional "Nurture" mode added post-release. "Nuture" is described by the devs as an "experimental" mode acting as a feature-lite raising sim using the same mechanics as the main game but running on a real-time calendar.
My total time in game was around 2.5 hours, which includes completing Shelter's main story and some time spent in Nurture. What follows are some of my opinions on the game.
Thoughts & opinions
It's been a few weeks since I finished Shelter and even with plenty of time to reflect, it's a little difficult to pin down exactly where I stand on Shelter. Case in point: this is the third or fourth version of this piece, and the prior draft was about double the length of what we have here. My bottom-line objective stance for those interested in this title: visit the game's store page. If you have a solid feeling you'll enjoy Shelter, I can safely recommend it to you. For those who might not be convinced, I'm personally not sure I'd be able to change your mind.
My own experience with Shelter I'd rate as "all right." The silent storytelling of the game was effective at getting me invested, and the emotional beats mostly hit. I cared about my little badger buddies on screen, and even now when I think about them they're cute and endearing. But there are some sticking points with Shelter that occasionally got in the way of my enjoyment as well. They can be split up into two main categories:
- The friction of Shelter as a "video game"
- The restrictions of Shelter's focused scope
However, before I dive into my criticisms, I want to give Shelter its due praise.
The excellence in Shelter
I will never begrudge the immense love and care that developer Might and Delight have put into Shelter. The game is as much a personal and human story as it is ecological. In no particular order, here's some of the fortes of Shelter:
The soundtrack. The acoustic guitar is the star of the show of the in-game music by Retro Family. It's appropriately atmospheric and captures the mood of the vignettes you play through. The music also serves an important role as a tone director and will cue you in to how you should be feeling during each scene. It's thankfully not heavy-handed and if anything helps smooth the transition from scenario to scenario as you wonder what to do, and how to feel, coming up next.
The art direction. Shelter looks excellent in a way that continues to age well. The stylized look of everything grants the game a folklore or storybook feeling to it, but remains definite enough so as not to abstract you from the events happening onscreen. I mentioned a kind of papercraft look that's a result of the flat shading and patterned textures reminiscent of handcraft or textiles, a sort of downtempo and moody counterpart to something similar to the low-poly vibrant cardboard worlds of Katamari Damacy, for example. Seeing stills of this game doesn't communicate the entireness of what it feels like to play Shelter in person.
The sound and environment design. The world of Shelter is expansive and at times perilous--the way it looks, sounds, and feels certainly matches that. Variations in weather, time of day, and various biomes of the forest you call home are backed with visuals and sound design that immerse you in the storybook world and make it feel real. The various flora and fauna all match the stylized look while being instantly recognizable, and sounds like your footfalls, snapping twigs, and the rush of running water all lend a sense of life and believability to the space.
My snags with Shelter
I think I can sum up my criticisms with Shelter under two main headers:
Shelter the video game wants for a bit of polish.
- Iffy gamepad support (YMMV). Although the Steam store page advertises gamepad support, I wasn't able to get past the main menu on the Steam Deck. I switched to mouse and keyboard controls on PC and everything worked fine there.
- Poor readability in menus. The in-game menus can be had to read since they're thin white font without outlines, and the menu backgrounds are 3D scenes from the game. There were some menu items that I just couldn't read even when squinting.
- Finicky camera. The sensitive camera collision means your smooth panning can be interrupted with jerky movements and abrupt zoom-ins that effectively obscure your vision. For certain action-focused scenes, it's better to run towards the camera than risk a 180 degree turn and become disoriented for precious seconds.
- Slow movement and large environments. Shelter has an impressive sense of scale, but it might be a bit too much. A large portion of my in-game time was spent in transit between points of interest, and a good portion of that travel time was spent waiting for my cubs to catch up with me since they move slower than their mother badger. This balancing communicates the point across well, but starts to become frustrating even through Shelter's relatively quick runtime.
- Some lack of clarity across the board. Shelter's harsh, but I feel like a large part of this difficulty, especially on your first play, is from not knowing what to do. Tutorials are limited to textless still images, and you are usually expected to perform actions with stakes high right at the get-go. The lack of safety or do-overs again lends to the immersion in Shelter's representation of the harsh forest, but it makes for a naturally unforgiving game even if the difficult itself isn't too bad.
Shelter's structure can sometimes feel focused to a fault. As a general rule I believe most games, especially indie games, benefit from tight focus on what they want to be, and what they want to achieve. Determining what's out of scope is just as important as what's in scope.
With Shelter, the simplicity is double-edged. I had mentioned earlier that the game has little extraneous or wasted, but conversely it might have benefited from more. The actions you perform throughout the game are inherently simple like "dig up plant" or "catch frog" and remain rather static through the whole game. The simplicity in execution is welcome, but these simple mechanics could have been mixed together to create some interesting scenarios that just aren't present in Shelter. As it is, Shelter is more a series of individual, isolated challenges that are connected with slow-paced travel, and it feels like a missed opportunity.
Closing
I'm still glad that I got to experience Shelter for myself after all of these years. It is a game put together with both care and craft, and it has plenty to love. In my mind, though, the great aspects of Shelter do have to be balanced with the problems with it.
As a lifetime contrarian, I'm always eager to try out a game for myself and see whether I agree or disagree with critical or mixed reviews. It's the way I've found some of my favorite games, and an attitude I encourage here. If Shelter is a title that interests you, I recommend you try it out--there's a good chance it will resonate with you in a way it may not have for me.
I love atmospheric, silent-storytelling type experiences like Shelter and thatgamecompany's Flower, and I'll keep playing them in the future. I look forward to eventually trying out Shelter 2, Might and Delight's 2015 sequel, to see how it stacks up to its predecessor.
You can visit Shelter's Steam store page here, and find Might and Delight's World of Shelter & Meadow project page here.