Review
Fallout Shelter: The Board Game
Fallout Shelter: The Board Game is a fair translation of the mobile game, including its weary repetition. Its worker-placement core is sound, but the rest feels conspicuously unfinished.
Fallout Shelter: The Board Game
- Published
- 2020
- Designer
- Andrew Fischer
- Publisher
- Fantasy Flight Games, ADC Blackfire Entertainment, Delta Vision Publishing
- Players
- 2–4
- Playing time
- 90 min
FFG has brought Fallout Shelter from the phone to the table with reasonable fidelity. It has also imported the original's chief defect: repetition. The Fallout dressing and the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. traits are recognisably on theme, yet they cannot animate a game that regularly feels only half assembled.
At its centre sits straightforward worker placement: you assign your people, use the available spaces, and build your progress through those choices. The mechanism does its job. It is not revolutionary, but it is not the part that has gone wrong.
It has also imported the original's chief defect: repetition.
EdgyJellyfish
The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. traits give those choices some thematic shape, while threats and encounters are meant to disturb the routine. They rarely manage it; they are rather bland. With so little player interaction, everyone mostly tends their own vault, as though the group has already survived one another.
There is a competent mechanism here, and a theme that needs no introduction. Like Outer Rim, though, it feels as if it stopped one step short of becoming a complete game. For now, keep away.
For now, keep away.
EdgyJellyfish
Source: BoardGameGeek
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