After traumatising my first family, first with the death of their cat, and finally with the death of the father, I set out to survive with a new family. This time I would remember to feed the pet, and keep an eye on our food and water supplies.

For my second playthrough of Sheltered, I created the Ridge Family. I tried to pick interesting traits, such as Resourceful, and made sure one of the characters had high strength. For the family pet I picked a dog. The dog turned out to be a great choice, as he can go on expeditions with the family and help fight anyone that attacks them.

Of course, a kid helping their parents and a dog kill someone is traumatising, but not so much that they lost any sleep over it.

While they were out fighting and looting on expeditions, I had the rest of the family upgrading and expanding the bunker. In my last run space ran out fairly quickly, so I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. I also built a lot of water storage. I wanted to make sure that after every time it rains there would be a lot of water available for expeditions.

For some reason, outsiders were a lot more violent in this run. Thankfully, the family dog was extremely good at protecting them. They came back with some decent loot, and we set to work upgrading the base even further.

I started planning longer expeditions, making sure we had enough water to last. I also noticed large clusters of locations that we could explore. Settlements, perhaps? These could be good places to explore for supplies, but they may also be inherently more dangerous.

I set up traps to catch food, and made sure to build a fridge to store the meat this time. This basically solved our food supply issues, but eating raw meat came with the disadvantage of food poisoning. I need to find a way to cook it to keep the family healthy.

We managed to find a couple of guns, which could be useful to defend the shelter if they had any bullets. We found another use for them: trade. Traders were willing to part with a great number of supplies to get their hands on one of these weapons.

People would come across our shelter and request to join us. Unfortunately we are tight on supplies as it is, and encounters on the surface have shown people can’t be trusted. As much as we want to be able to help people, family comes first.

We sent an expedition to one of the nearby settlements, which turned out to be called Furholme. We found a lot of supplies. Meanwhile a second expedition found themselves running from a bear!

Food poisoning was becoming a real problem. It would make the shelter dirty and attract rats, so we were constantly cleaning. We needed a way to cook the meat, and make a stove we needed metal. We need metal for upgrades, and to expand the shelter as well. From now on we would target our expeditions towards sites that might have metal.

We have been foolish. Too many showers, too little rain, and now we are running out of water. We disabled the shower to save water, but it was too late. We had very little left to drink. We won’t be able to go on expeditions any more. We can’t shower. We can’t even use our makeshift toilet.

Days passed and all we could do was wait. Each day getting further dehydrated, each day edging closer to death. We needed to find more metal so we can cook our meat. But we had not the water for it. All we could do is wait and hope that raw meat and the lack of water wouldn’t kill us.

After an agonising four days we finally heard the pitter patter of raindrops on the surface above. Then it became a torrent, filling up our water butts. We took showers, and set off on more expeditions. We came back with more metal, but still not enough for our needs.

We have disabled the showers again for now. They drain too much water. We will just have to put up with the smell until we can get a steadier supply. We need to rethink our expeditions. One person can go out with the dog seeking metal in familiar places. They will be protected and don’t need to carry a lot.

Another pair can go and explore the nearby settlements. There will be strength in numbers, and they should bring back more supplies. With one remaining at the base they can maintain and upgrade everything as needed.

Once we have enough metal we can cook our food. Food poisoning shouldn’t be a problem anymore. After that, who knows? We should have enough food and water to survive indefinitely. Perhaps we can expand the shelter further, so that we can invite others in. More people will use more supplies, but more people can also find more supplies.

We have survived 18 days without any deaths so far. Let’s see if we can make it a whole month.