Zombies have always been a popular subject for films, books and games, so it is no surprise when a new game based on a zombie apocalypse should hit the android OS.

Shelter, from Survivalist Games takes a slightly different approach to mashing zombies by presenting a game which combines card based combat with an interactive graphic novel to tell the story.

The start of the game sets up the basic premise. You are a survivor, who is separated from his girlfriend by the onset of the zombie invasion; don’t you just hate when that happens? So you need to gather together supplies before heading off. The first set of objectives has you gather together a car, tools, food and diesel. Each of these are found at different locations and each location has you facing off against the shambling dead.

From your overview screen you choose a place to investigate by tapping the screen. This will bring up another comic panel, with a small explanation. You can choose to investigate or ignore. If you investigate you’re presented with the battle page. Here you find out what type of zombie you will be facing and you have access to your deck. The initial deck is quite kind and you should be able to win your initial battles. As the game progresses you are able to play around with your deck to build, hopefully, a killer deck which will defeat your enemies.

The gaming area is set up with the zombie cards at the top, below which are five areas they can move into. Below this are another five spaces which will be filled with various barriers, locked doors etc. and below this is where you place your active cards, being various forms of attack. If the zombies get to the bottom of the screen, you are dead. As the zombies start to attack, the cards are compared and points deducted from both. The first card to lose all its points gets discarded. Combat is turn based with the inclusion of a dice to add an amount of randomness.

As the story unfolds the complexity of the combat increases, forcing you to really think about the cards that are going to make up your deck. These you can tweak in the built-in deck builder. There is also the option to add allies which will help in combat.

The game has great depth with over one hundred cards to play with over fifty locations. The game play only has the story mode, but the game provides enough variation to not make this a problem. The only problem with the game is the lack of a save option. The game will save itself at the end of any combat stage, but if you have to stop for any reason then you’re back to the beginning of that battle.

Visually the game is attractive, although the music is basic and I found myself turning the audio off after the first half hour. Overall this is a very good single player game.

8

Charles Packer