Fallout Shelter

Bethesda's free-to-play Vault management game where you act as Overseer of your own shelter.

Fallout Shelter is a free-to-play construction and management game from Bethesda Game Studios, built with help from Behaviour Interactive and published by Bethesda Softworks. Set in the Fallout universe, it puts the player in charge of a Vault, an underground fallout shelter, as its Overseer. It launched on iOS in June 2015 and later reached Android, Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, and it can even be played in Tesla vehicles. Critics liked its art style, its core loop and the way it expanded the Fallout world, while faulting its shallow depth, microtransactions and lack of an ending.

Quick Facts

Developer

Bethesda Game Studios, Behaviour Interactive

Publisher

Bethesda Softworks

Producer

Craig Lafferty

Artist

Istvan Pely
Ilya Nazarov
Jaime Villa

Designer

Emmanuelle Hardy-Senecal
Tomas Henriquez
Janick Neveu

Writer

Emil Pagliarulo

Programmer

Federico Cicchi, Daniel Amthauer

Series

Fallout

Facts from the source article.

Background

Interest in a mobile Fallout dates back years: in 2009 Todd Howard said several iOS designs had been pitched and turned down, and John Carmack of id Software built an internal proof of concept for an iPhone version. Bethesda finally revealed Fallout Shelter at its Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference on June 14, 2015, releasing it on iOS the same day. It was built in the Unity engine, and Pete Hines named Little Computer People, XCOM, SimCity and FTL: Faster Than Light among its inspirations. The Android release followed on August 13, 2015, the PC version on July 14, 2016, and Xbox One on February 7, 2017. At E3 2018 it arrived on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

Did You Know?

Preston Garvey from Fallout 4 joined as a lunchbox reward on June 30, 2015.
It was the first Fallout game on a Nintendo platform, not counting a pinball adaptation.
Bethesda sued Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive in 2018, claiming the Westworld mobile game copied it; the case settled.
It was pulled from storefronts on October 3, 2025, to fix a Unity security flaw, then relisted.