Build a better future undergrounde in Fallout Shelter: The Board Game , a post-nuclear worker-placement board game for two to four players. Based on the hit mobile game from Bethesda Softworks, Fallout Shelter sees you take on the role of a vault officer fostering happiness among the citizens of your vault. With the election of a new Overseer looming, the officer who can gain the most happiness among the dwellers is sure to lock up the election and attain victory.

As an officer, you’ll have to direct your dwellers to where they’ll spend their time in the vault, whether it’s spending some time relaxing in the lounge, gathering vital resources like food in the community gardens, or battling a radroach infestation in the game room. The choice is always yours, but remember, you’ll have to balance happiness and efficiency to lead your people to a brighter future underground!

Every game of Fallout Shelter will begin with the same basic setup for your exciting Vault-Tec Vault! But don’t worry, your vault will grow in surprising new ways as you construct rooms for your dwellers to visit. Your job starts small, assigning two dwellers at a time to their daily tasks, but with proper planning that number can grow to seven dwellers working under your inspired leadership. The tasks that your dwellers will take on are represented by spaces spread across the vault.

Each of these spaces offers different rewards and benefits, from generating the happiness used to win the game, to producing resources, to fighting off threats from the Wasteland. Every room has a different effect, and most can support up to two dwellers at any given time!

Many of these effects give you the resources to build and expand your vault! You’ll have to manage energy, food, and water if you want to build new rooms and attract the dwellers of the vault to earn their vote. Every officer has their own level of the vault that they can expand in creative ways. You’ll always have the option to construct one of three rooms by placing a dweller on your elevator and paying the required cost of the room, listed in the bottom-right corner of the room.

These rooms light up your dweller’s eyes and provide exciting new opportunities! Even better, when another officer sends one of their dwellers to your level of the vault, they have to pay you a resource. Having the most attractive level on the vault is a surefire way to win the hearts and minds of your fellow vault dwellers. It's also a surefire way to end the game! When an officer builds the sixth room on their floor, the game will conclude at the end of the round.

But you can’t spend all your resources selfishly building new rooms. Your dwellers will also need these resources to complete certain tasks, and you may need them whenever a threat, like a fire, breaks out! Balancing your resources between building new rooms, completing tasks, and taking care of threats will be the key to victory and happiness for you and your dwellers!

As your dwellers complete tasks, they may find themselves excelling in certain aspects of their daily lives. If a dweller becomes trained in one of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. traits, they receive double the rewards for specific daily tasks related to that trait! With a limited number of tasks per turn, these exceptional dwellers can provide a windfall of resources and contribute to building a better society! 

After everyone is done placing their dwellers, officers will have to deal with a variety of threats! During this part of the turn, players will roll two dice to determine where various threats pop up in the vault, representing everything from a power outage to super mutants invading the vault. Radroaches or Feral Ghouls can show up when you least expect them, and with a transparent overlay, these monster cards slot perfectly right on top of a room. Threats also represent a ticking clock: when the threat deck runs out, the game is over!

Enemies block off spaces from being used, and more importantly, every threat on your level will detract from your happiness at the end of the game! While dealing with threats like a fire simply takes resources, your dwellers will have to arm up and fight enemies if they have any hope of a brighter future!

Every enemy has a space on the bottom half of the card. To defeat an enemy, you’ll have to place a dweller in its space and roll two dice, hoping to equal or exceed this number. If you do, the monster is defeated and removed from the vault! If you fail, your dweller becomes injured and will have to spend some time in the Medbay before getting back to work!

While this may seem like a tall order, your dwellers don’t have to go in unarmed! By venturing out into the Wasteland themselves, your dwellers can find weapons like missile launchers to help take care of any pesky infestations in the vault! But that’s not all you can find out in the Wasteland! Maybe they’ll come back with new nightwear, sure to make them the talk of the vault, or a new Stimpack to boost a dweller who is feeling a little under the weather.

Every dweller is important to your path to overseer. The happier you keep your dwellers, the better chance you’ll have to lead your people to a brighter future as the new overseer!