First of all, I'd like to start out this review with one simple fact- I adore the shelter games. Shelter 1, although my experience of it was through videos and not actual gameplay, was a masterpiece of which I hope to someday enjoy. Shelter 2 was even better then the first, showing the game through the eyes of a predator rather then prey, and the dangers that being one encompasses, as well. These two games were connected by a few things- the unique art style, the sense of motherhood, the wonderful music and the engaging mechanics. However, I feel like Shelter 3 lacks those things in a few ways.
First of all, I'd like to highlight the two things I enjoyed. The music and art! While the music did feel a little lackluster, with it mainly being either calm music or intense depending on the situation with little variety, it still was quite nice to listen to and I enjoy listening to the soundtrack in my own time. The art did not fail either, and there isn't really anything I can say to take it down. It captures the series of Shelter well!
However, there is a lot of things that I didn't really like. The game is very, VERY slow. Elephants as a species, of course, are slow, but there's probably a better way to incorporate that into the game then just sitting there and walking for an hour and a half. The cycle was basically walk, eat, pick a direction and repeat. The game is extremely pretty and I do like the fact that you can sit back and just enjoy the scenery, but it DOES get tiring after a while.
Plus, for a game with this much walking, there was a lot of bugs you could encounter purely by walking. Every single time I saw another animal that wasn't a direct threat, they would just completely ignore me. I am being completely and utterly serious. I would walk straight into creatures and they would not even flinch. It was pretty immersion breaking, honestly.
Now... the threats. The threats were laughable. My first playthrough I barely even ran into any threats the entire time, even without looking at a map or anything, which honestly feels like either bad game design or extreme luck. My second playthrough I went a completely different way and did actually encounter some enemies, and they felt pretty lifeless. Crocodiles, one of the threats, just kind of float alongside the river and you must wait for them to pass you for your herd to go by safe, a bit like Crossy Road. Aside from the music ramping up, it didn't feel like a rush whatsoever and when you realize the gimmick, it's extremely goofy. Even in Shelter 2 once I had gotten used to the fog it still made me shiver a little.
Tigers on the other hand did make me a bit more worried. In order to combat tigers, you have to create a protective circle around your young using an emergency call. Even when I understood how to properly go against the tigers, I did find myself hesitating and startling a little bit whenever it would pop up out of no where, but still... It was extremely easy to fend them off with little to no experience. Not a single elephant of mine died to either crocodiles or tigers, which usually should be a pretty amazing feat for a shelter game.
Now, onto the last threat, starvation. You graze along the way, but the best way to refill hunger is fruit trees. Unlike other shelter games, there wasn't really much you could do to make it fun. While with Shelter 1 you had to ram trees and scavenge food, and in Shelter 2 you had to physically hunt for your own meals by killing rabbits and chasing after deer whilst conserving stamina, playing as an elephant is kind of just shambling along to another tree. It's boring. There is a threat of starvation constantly, but it just felt like a chore rather then something that weighed down on you. You didn't have to think, you just had to walk.
Something that really annoyed me was the lack of problem solving when it came to foods. I couldn't give it to specific members of the herd, I couldn't prioritize who was starving and feed less to those who got to the trees first, they just got to the tree and ate. Whoever got there last was a sucker, I guess. Because of this deaths related to starvation felt less like my fault and more like something I couldn't stop. I felt helpless, and not in the 'life is tough' way, but in the 'this game is badly designed' way.
And finally... the herd. I did not feel anything at all towards my herd. I was supposed to protect them, but I ended up having mostly negative feelings towards my herd because the things that stood out were not personality quirks (which I'm not sure exist) but instead the times when they bugged out and made me lose time trying to get them out of their predicaments. And that affected the ending, too! If I don't care about the characters, it's hard to genuinely connect with the story because I didn't care about if my herd lived or died. The idea of the story, in theory, is interesting and I feel like if it was more polished then it would have been wonderful, but in the end it is only an idea that was badly executed. :[
Also, now that I've proof read this, I've noticed that I completely forgot about the calf. I, uh, think that speaks volumes on how much I cared about my calf. My first playthrough my calf died almost instantly because I kept missing the queues to feed them, so I spent the majority of the game without them, and the second playthrough I did I tried my hardest to keep the kid alive, but eventually my calf died because they were refusing to eat and I couldn't figure out why. I didn't find any emotional attachment, and I thought that it would help the more and more I played the game, but at this point in time, even after naming the calf (in my head, they do not allow you to do that in game, which contributes to the emotional separation), I couldn't really find the calf as anything but a liability, especially since you must feed your calf so often. (In a way that doesn't really contribute to the game loop. You just stop and let the calf nurse).
In the end, I can't recommend this game. I feel like it is pretty unpolished at it's current state, especially considering the fact that it was released about four years ago as of now.
