Shelter 2 is a great but niche game, it really stands out from the generic yearly titles spewed out by the big publishers these days. It's the kind of game that makes me love indie developers. I haven't played Shelter, but I've always loved big cats (and the not so big!) so I thought I'd try it out. Graphicly it's nothing to shout about, low poly models and basic texturing. However, the games artistic approach is what sets it apart. Yeah it may not be Cry Engine 3 stuff, but that doesn't matter because it's patchwork style textures are really charming and I love them. Gameplay wise, it's a little repetitive and I feel that this is a real "marmite" game. Either you'll love it and have multiple playthroughs or you'll spend half an hour in it and then never play it again. The core of the game is raising your cubs from newborns to adulthood. You need to hunt, provide food to avert starvation and protect them from predators (wolves in this case) and any environmental hazards however I've yet to really meet any. This is where the game seems to fall short sometimes. In Shelter although it was more liner there were instances where you had to protect your family from forest fires but there doesn't seem to be anything like that here. I can't help but feel there are missed opportunities to introduce some more depth to the game than simply catching prey and avoiding wolf packs. Perhaps a menu to view your cubs progress in detail, it's easy to forget their names since you can't seem to view them after the initial "birth scene" in the den. However, in the grand scheme of things these are relatively minor details. The core game is solid, and while there are some performance issues here and there I haven't encountered any game breaking bugs. For the money you're spending, you owe it to yourself to at least try this game if for no other reason that to support a great indie developer who I'm sure we'll see even higher quality games from in the future!
