Shelter from the Storm's hilarious charm rekindled my love for the humble point-and-click
It's all so lovably punny
Now that I think about it, point-and-click adventures were the very thing that got me into gaming in the first place. I still remember vividly how excited I'd be to come home from school only to boot up our clunky MS-DOS and dive into another Sierra Entertainment misadventure, whether that's aiding a rebellious kid turn back time to save Benjamin Franklin or helping a sleazy middle-aged man deal with lounge lizards (which might not have been entirely age-appropriate at the time).
There were no quality-of-life features then, no easy way to return to an earlier save point if you managed to fail spectacularly, and no helpful walkthroughs to consult online. But it didn't matter as long as I was having fun, and Shelter from the Storm reminded me of all that.
It did, in essence, actually shelter me from the noisy storm of mobile games battering against the window from the outside, offering a nice, simple, and self-contained little adventure for me to enjoy in a single sitting. The whole thing took me a little under an hour to finish, which is perfect for what it's trying to do - and that's to help you find a way to leave a haunted mansion you somehow find yourself stuck in in the middle of a storm.
And your unnamed protagonist is incredibly snarky too, which is always a signature quirk for characters in the genre. There's no shortage of witty puns here, with everything from silly bathroom jokes to clever quips that break the fourth wall. The mansion itself is pretty tiny, with only a small number of rooms to weave in and out of, but that doesn't take away from the fun, and it still manages to provide a challenge, especially since there's not a lot of pixel-hunting here.
And what I absolutely love about the whole experience is that it's perfectly optimised for mobile, the way a lot of point-and-clicks surprisingly fail to do. Here, you simply tap to interact with an item, or tap to walk to where you need to go (and double-tap to pick up the pace). That's exactly what point-and-click mechanics should be on mobile, and you don't even need to do any complicated bits and bobs to combine things in your inventory. As long as you have what you need, you simply tap where you want to use it, and you're good to go.
Given its short runtime, there's not a lot of story to unpack here, as you might expect. But for some reason, I just found the ending so darn funny that it almost feels like such a shame that it's over so quickly. That's part of its charm, though, and since it's entirely free to play with no ads or microtransactions, it's the perfect indie gem to play on your handheld device just to pass the time.
And honestly, it's been a long, long time since I've played an indie adventure as lovely as this. In a market that's saturated with gacha pulls and limited-time events, it can be difficult to find your audience. Shelter from the Storm is a quiet and unassuming indie project that I hope people will pay attention to, as it absolutely deserves it - and if you've been looking for the same, then you should totally give this a go.
And if you're curious about what the leading cause of dry skin is in a horror-esque point-and-click puzzler about escaping from a haunted mansion in a storm, your hilarious protagonist has all the answers and more!
