The core of the game is that you are a manager of a vault, a vast underground bunker. It looks like an interesting, fun thing where the primary mode of engagement would be waiting for things to happen. Pitched as a mobile and tablet game and leaning into the capabilities of those devices, it looked to me like yet another game in the lineage of Tiny Tower and Farmville.
When Todd Howard announced Fallout Shelter onstage at E3 back in 2015, my reaction was muted. Fallout Shelter is a way of negotiating living life after it becomes difficult to do so. That is, after all, what the tags suggest. It is odd to me, though, that Fallout Shelter would be a game that is about simulating and managing survival.