Shelter is a browser-based social survival game for 4 to 16 players. A global catastrophe has hit, and the only way through it is a place in the underground shelter — which has room for a handful. Every player holds a hidden dossier: profession, health, hobby, phobia, baggage. Cards open one at a time, everyone argues that they are the one worth saving, and each round the table votes on who stays outside. No download, no sign-up — create a room and send your friends the link.
Enter a name, hit “Create room” and get a short code. The host sets the game up straight away: how many players, how many places in the shelter, how long each speech runs and which card categories are in play.
Drop the invite link into Telegram or Discord. Friends join straight from the browser, on a phone or a laptop, with no install and no account. It works from 4 people; 8–12 is the sweet spot.
Each round everyone opens one trait from their dossier and speaks in turn: why the shelter needs your asthmatic biologist more than somebody else’s chef with three children. A built-in chat and a speech timer keep the debate moving.
At the end of the round the table votes someone out. It repeats until exactly as many people remain as there are places. The survivors find out how their story underground ended.
Each dossier is built from several hidden categories, and only one may be opened per round. That is what creates the tension: a strong profession can be undone the moment health is revealed, and the “useless” player turns out to be the only one who can fix a generator.
Between 4 and 16. The game is at its best with 8–12: enough people for a real argument, and few enough places that they are worth fighting over.
No. Shelter runs in the browser on desktop and mobile. A guest can create a room and play with no account at all — signing in is only for a profile, achievements and cosmetics.
Yes, you can play for free. Tokens for play time are granted every day and a short ad tops them up. A subscription removes ads, raises the room size and unlocks the host’s advanced settings.
Yes. The interface is built for a mobile browser — cards, voting and chat all work the same on a phone as on a laptop, and the invite link pastes straight into a chat.
Yes. The host can write a custom catastrophe with its own description and effects, assemble a custom set of traits, and save it as a pack to reuse in later games.
It is a standalone online game with its own name, its own card sets, its own catastrophes and its own voting rules. Anyone who has played tabletop survival-argument games will recognise the shape of it — but this is not their version and not their sequel.
The room has text chat, a speech timer and a turn queue, so a whole game fits inside the browser. Plenty of groups still call each other on Discord, and nothing here gets in the way of that.
Shelter is an online survival game set in a bunker after a global catastrophe: conversational, psychological, with no dice and no luck. Arguments and reading people are all there is. If you like talking survival games and the tabletop game “Bunker”, Shelter’s mechanics will feel immediately familiar — while the catastrophes, the card editor, the host modes and the friends who join from a single link in under a minute are its own. The reference to the tabletop game is descriptive and comparative only.