The first game in the trilogy took you on a rather linear journey following a mother badger trying hard to shelter her cubs from the dangers that haunted the surreal landscape. This time around we follow a mother lynx as she feeds and defends her cubs in an open world that shifts its abundance with the passing of seasons.. Will you see your children grow up to be strong independent cats or will they wilt away, like flowering herbs caught unaware in the withering grip of winter?
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Shelter 2 is in many ways a continuation of the first game, yet at the same time it walks its own path. Where the first game was a stroll along a rather railroaded landscape with happenings taking place at opportune moments while your pups slowly starved, this brings a more open ended world to explore more or less freely as you hunt for nourishment for your everhungering cubs. The world consists of three separate zones, four if you own the DLC, each with its own challenges. As the seasons change the wildlife migrates between the zones and to maximise your cubs chances of survival you have to follow the migration all while staying away from the dangers that lurk in the landscape. On your journeys you will continuously map your surroundings giving you a better bearing while simultaneously exploring more of the vast tracts of lands you call home. The graphics are the same abstract and highly stylised form and personally I have come to appreciate the rather unique and kaleidoscopic style, but it might be an acquired taste.
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The gameplay is fine with an emphasis on the hunt and prowl this time around. Stalk your prey and put them down in a rather addictive loop of sneak, sprint and kill everything from small rodents to the mighty deer. To facilitate the hunt you have a “prey sight” that contrasts the living edible things from the background as well as a stealth mode that works somewhat in sneaking up on your victim. I really enjoyed the hunt in this game even though it could, at times, turn into a chore when the controls steer you into a rock or an unbreakable twig that stops you dead in the tracks.

After finishing the game normally, I stubbornly went for the survival difficulty without counting on how much harder it would make the game. Overall though the survival aspects of the game was fine and made me feel all kinds of terror as my loved ones suffered from the harsh reality of a failed hunt.. In this game however the signs of your cubs struggling are more clear and both audio and visual cues aid in telling when a cub is near exhaustion, a fact that makes the game even more stressful at times.

So the basic game is more or less, have your cubs survive for as long as possible by roaming the lands looking for prey. There is also a sort of collectible minigame where there are a ton of collectibles strewn throughout the landscape, and to a completionist there is plenty of work to do to collect all the twigs, leaves and mushrooms. My main problem with the collection is that it blends almost too well into the rest of the cluttered background and finding all the miniscule stuff is hard to begin with. On top of that you have hardly any time to explore while your cubs are around, a fact that makes the game diminish the nourishing aspects of the general theme in favor of a weird collect-a-thon of random stuff. So that's a miss for me..
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In the end I really like this game, despite it being quite overwhelming in the collection department. All in all the more open aspect of the game really gave the game a slightly more “realistic” take on animals following the foodsource, be it grass or beef and the environment was varied and really gave the sense of a living breathing world.

Conclusion: Highly recommended if you enjoy wildlife simulation games with an emotional twist. Between this and Paws I would say the latter is the stronger contender for its more cohesive narrative and being less of a sandbox, but there is beauty in roaming free, and this game got that aplenty..

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Great story

Just...Beautiful. No glitches whatsoever! The kits are super cute, and you don't need to be a master with computering to play it, and you don't need to click anything to kill the animals. The mountain DLC Is really fun also.