Shelter is a survival video game. In Shelter, players control a mother badger who is escorting her five cubs from their burrow to a new home and must protect them from danger.Along the journey the cubs will gradually get hungry and require food which the player must provide for them by either catching prey, such as foxes, or finding fruit and vegetables.Threats to the cubs come in different forms in each section of the game. In the first and latter sections of the game, there are areas that contain circling birds of prey which can fly down and pick off a cub if it is out in the open for too long. One section of the game takes place at night, giving the player limited vision of their surroundings. In this section, cubs will occasionally be scared by noises and will run away from the player, requiring them to chase the cubs until they are within a safe radius of the mother. In a later section, the player must travel through a wildfire, keeping the cubs safe from the spreading blaze. Another requires the player to escort the cubs up an overflowing river. The goal of the game becomes to have as many cubs as possible survive the journey to shelter.